Perhaps...

...this is a bit premature, but my "Tek's-injury-is-the-beginning-of-th-end" prediction seems pretty spot on today. Unfortunately. God I hate the Yankees. The worst part of it all is that, if I listen closely enough, I can hear them etching "Jeter" on the MVP trophy, and that thing totally should belong to Papi.

Boston Red Sox : The Official Site

Boston Red Sox : The Official Site

God, this makes me sick to my stomach.

I'm getting decidingly less-friendly or optimistic every time I check the scoreboard.

Major League Baseball : News : Major League Baseball News

Major League Baseball : News : Major League Baseball News

So here we go--five games to decide, well not really to decide, more to help decide who will win the A.L.East. After all, it is only August.

Yet this certainly feels like a wild card series, five games--one trip through the rotation. And the Red Sox are boasting a (slightly) improved rotation with the recent performances of David Wells. Now if they can just find a fifth starter... perhaps under a rock... perhaps a friendly old knuckleballer?

I couldn't find any news on Wake this morning (although I didn't look very hard), but the Sox rotation will be put to the test this weekend--two double headers in three days will mean that someone ends up pitiching on short rest (even with yesterday's off day). It probably means that Wells will have to pitch game 5 Sunday on three days rest. That should truly test his health.

I don't know if I'm optimistic or pessimistic regarding this weekend--I guess I'm smack dab in the middle. Since Tek went down, I've been one three game losing streak away from throwing baseball out the window and focusing on football. A good series this weekend could change all that. A bad weekend and, well, Monday's post will be less than friendly. Living in Indiana, its tough for me to get a consistent bead on this team--I rarely get to watch games. This weekend most of the games will be televised (starting this afternoon, but I have faculty meetings and other such nonsense to attend!), I look forward to watching the action.

Back Again

O.K., those pesky doctoral exams are over and I survived my first few days as a technology mentor for incoming graduate students. Now, time to get back to the important stuff: baseball in the fall.

I am happy that the Red Sox didn't trade away any young talent for a 4 or 5 starter. That was my position in my post from before the break, and I sticking to it. As a rhetorician, I do think Theo could have spun the lack of deadline trade a bit better. Here's what he said:

"We were asked over and over again for our young pitchers," General Manager Theo Epstein said an hour after the 4 p.m. EDT deadline for non-waiver deals. "As much as we desperately wanted to help our team, it would have been shortsighted to sacrifice our plan."

He also said this:

"Our approach as an organization to the Yankees is to respect them, to assume they're going to win around 100 games, and to forget about them until October," he said. "To get emotional, reactive, would be to throw out the window everything we believe in."

He did come close to some deals.

"In the end, we didn't think it was worth it," Epstein said. "As disappointed as we are not to add a significant piece, we're proud of the results."

Philosophically speaking, I agree with Epstein--no one wants to relive Freddy Sanchez for Jeff Suppan or, dare I even say it, Jeff-you-know-who for Larry-what-was-his-name. However, I think a more rhetorical response in this situation would have gone more like this:

With so many teams in the hunt this year, talent just wasn't available. We feel that there;s nobody out there significantly better than the guys we have. Once we get healthy, which should be soon, we've got all the pieces we need to compete. Remember that we'll be getting David Wells and Tim Wakefield back soon--that's over 400 career wins. Who acquired that kind of talent this weekend?(qtd in MaineToday.com)

Don't actually say that the present isn't worth the future or that you are not willing to give up talent to improve right now. That implicitly tells the guys playing right now that you don't need to win, or believe that you will win, etc. This is a minor point, but, hey, I'm a rhetorician, its my job to sweat the small stuff (in the era of the hyperreal, image is everything).

Well there's more I could blab about, like the loss of Tek (which, and my wife will certainly hold me to this, I signaled as the end of the Red Sox season and said would cost the Red Sox at least a half a run a game in terms of team E.R.A--I'll do the math soon)--but I've got to go. I have a pile of laundry that is calling my name (literally, I think it is morphing into a new life form "Welcome to the desert of puerile").