Dirty Water: Sox Talk With the Thunderstick

dcat: The Red Sox have played four games since the All-Star break. Win-loss-win-loss. In the two wins they looked great. In the two losses they were frustrating as hell, revealing an inability to hit in the clutch and a noisome tendency to leave slews of guys on base in what turn out to be close games. What I’m trying to keep in mind is that even in 2004 the Sox had their frustrating periods – long, drawn out ones in fact – and that they never sat in the catbird seat like this year’s team does.

Still, it feels as if we have been hovering at twenty games above .500 for two months now. Largely because I believe we have. I have an impossible time believing that we are going to finish 91-71, but some days it feels like it. Now admittedly, for game series are like doubleheaders – they are hard to sweep and going 2-2 against the second-place team in the division is acceptable. But we need to get back to winning series. And the lineup simply has to start getting guys in from second and third when given (multiple) opportunities.

Thunderstick: Very disappointing loss against Toronto today. We're 3-4 in our last seven. Out three wins have been have been pretty easy victories and our four losses have been by 1 run. There's two ways to look at that--one is that good fortune needs to even out at some point and while we may have had a break or two falling our way when we got out to 21 games over .500 by mid-May, they are now falling against us and bringing our total record back in line with what it likely should be for this team. Or you could say that this team just isn't getting it done in the clutch and that's what it feels like to me a lot more than the other explanation. Once again we let a ton of opportunities go by and just couldn't get it done. Disappointing.

Teams that win in the playoffs win these one-run contests either by hanging on with great bullpen pitching or getting clutch at bats in the late innings--we've gotten the former when we've been leading close contests, but we haven't gotten the latter in a long time. Anyway, hopefully 3 with KC and 4 with the White Sox cure things this week. We need a 5-2 run here.