Dirty Water: Sox Talk With the Thunderstick

dcat: Ugh. Two terrible losses in which we gave up comfortable leads and squandered good-to-great pitching performances has me just plain disgusted. we still have a four-game cushion and we still may be the best team in baseball, but I simply cannot talk about the red Sox right now without feeling sick to my stomach. You take it away . . .

Thunderstick: What a shitty weekend. We have the best bullpen in baseball and we absolutely waste stellar efforts by Dice (who really fought through some tough early innings and was up against it in a fantastic pitching duel on Friday which he left with the lead) and Schilling. I guess to some extent, things have to even out. Our pen has been so good all year and no doubt a lot of the reasons why we built such a big lead initially in the AL East was because we didn't blow and leads for 2+ months, so I guess eventually you have to blow your share, but what a completely demoralizing weekend to blow two games they should have won while the Tribe did their best "Cavs in the NBA finals" impression against the Yanks and the lead is at 4 which might as well be zero given that there are still 40+ games left to make that up.

Here's why I've got really bad vibes right now. The Sox have made a host of trade-deadline deals in the past--sometimes they don't seem like much, sometimes they seem like they are going to get us over the top. But the 2004 Nomar trade was a lot different--I remember reading that they traded Nomar for a less-talented shortstop in Orlando Cabrera and a late-inning first base defensive replacement in Minky and thinking "wow--this is a panic move". But it turned out to be great--Minky ended up making some big defensive plays late in games that Millar may have booted and Cabrera went on to have a fantastic end of the year and was a great catalyst to the offense hitting behind Damon in the 2 spot. That's the only deal I remember the Sox making where I thought "this is an awful deal" and then in turned out to be just what they needed. Well, the Gagne deal is the exact opposite of that. When they got him, all I thought was that "this is a great trade, the Sox didn't give up a lot and now we've got three great relievers at the end of the pen and we kept him away from the Yanks" and I had visions of the game being over after 6 innings when Okie would come in and lock down the 7th, Gagne in the 8th and Pap in the 9th. Now, I think Gagne has only gotten through one outing with the Sox without giving up a run and he was nothing short of disasterous this weekend. Anyway, this is like the opposite OC/Minky trade right now. Looked great and is proving to be disastrous. Things like this happen to teams that aren't meant to do much, if anything, come October. Hopefully TB provides us what we need in these next three games to feel better about the team.