Red Sux: Another Lost Series to those Damn Yankees

It’s almost September, and I’m starting to get worried. Another series against the Yankees concluded, and again the Red Sox have slipped in the standings. After dropping two of three, the Sox are now seven and a half games behind the Damn Yankees and clinging to a one game lead in the wild card.

Things looked bad from the outset last night, with the first pitch of the game (of the entire game!) getting poked over the short wall in right field for a home run. One pitch, one run, just like that. As if an omen portending the night ahead, that home run was the first of five the Yankees would pop off Beckett, the most the Sox ace has given up in a single game in his career. To be fair, Francona kept Beckett in the game through the eighth despite his poor performance, allowing him to give up nine hits and eight runs, all of them earned.

Maybe Francona thought the game was out of reach by then; no point abusing a bullpen still recovering from a long night of bailing out Brad Penny’s abysmal start in the series opener. But still, eight runs? Beckett may be the staff ace, but even he needs to get the hook when his stuff isn’t crackling and an important game is on the line.

What happened to this team? At the start of the season they were blowing the competition away as if their games were nothing more than those gimmicky preseason jaunts against college teams. They were the Globetrotters to the rest of the leagues Washington Generals, flipping insane no-look-over-the-shoulder-full-court bombs for repeated backboard shattering alley-oops. Since the All Star game, though, the Sox have posted a losing record and kept inching closer and closer to a lackluster finish with no post season berth.

Hopefully, with the long list of players on the DL getting shorter—Matsuzaka and Wakefield are ready to return, and Lowell is steadily improving from his nagging hip issues—everything will fall into place. On paper, the Sox seemed poised for a late second half push, a ridiculous winning streak from here on through October.

Or they could just shoot themselves in the collective foot, get swept by some lowly teams down the stretch and have to wait around until next year while the juggernaut Yankees easily saunter to another championship. The prospect of that seems the more likely of the two, what with their blockbuster signing of Sabathia and Burnett in the off-season for, I believe, off the top of my head, a combined eight trillion dollars. They are, undoubtedly, the team to beat, and they’re performing like it at just the right time. It’s unfortunate, sure, but ultimately expected.

With a month left to go, the Redo Sox don’t have time to patiently sort out their musical chair line up. Adding another closer like Wagner isn’t going to cut it.

So a note to the AL: beat down those pinstriped goons and, while you’re at it, on the Rays and Rangers too, just in case they try any funny business to sneak past Boston in the wild card standings. And a note to the Red Sox: cut it out guys, you’re too good of a team to suffer these silly losses.

Thanks to msmail for the Yankees Suck! photo