Right Guy, Wrong Result

Regardless of the 9-8 final score, Red Sox fans couldn't ask for much more than the scenario that unfolded in the matchup's final moments.


Down one run, runner on second base. Manny Ramirez at the dish, sitting on 297 home runs. Against a power pitcher with a curve. If ManRam finds a fastball, Jonathan Papelbon is rushing up in the bullpen, getting ready to toss the bottom of the ninth.

Instead, a hamstrung Manny grounded out meekly to end the game. That's the way it works sometimes, and this was one of those times. Still, it hardly diminished a fabulously offensive game from two teams who are rapidly starting to look like legitimate AL title contenders.

Things just didn't go according to plan from pitch one. Tim Wakefield struggled in a slide back performance just nights after his best outing in years. Amazingly, he lasted less than three innings and required Terry Francona to throw water on one of his worst performances as a pitcher who has often served as a Sox fireman himself. Funny how seven hits and seven runs over just 2.2 innings can do that to you.

Tonight, he was bettered by a local Twins rookie who was on his game, even though Minnesota manager Ron Gardenhire very nearly gave him enough rope to hang himself. In the end, Nick Blackburn lasted six innings, allowing nine hits and four runs, eventually good enough for the win as Boston constantly rallied yet never quite caught up.

Still, there WERE a handful of positives for Boston to reflect upon in the aftermath of a second loss in the three-game set, marking just the third series this year the Sox have dropped. Coco Crisp knocked out a homer for the second night in a row, Alex Cora looked completely healthy in knocking around Minnesota pitching and flashing serious leather. And, perhaps most important of all, ManRam didn't argue against pinch hitting when Terry Francona called his name, despite the fact that he'd specifically asked for the night off .

Do those developments make up for the loss? Hardly. But they do bring a certain optimism amidst a fantastic game to watch, as long as you weren't the one on the pitching rubber.

STARTNING PITCHING: -
No other way to judge Wake on this night, which is striking in how diametrically opposed it was to last Tuesday. If ever WMYM needed reminding, tonight just goes to prove that the only safe bet on a night Wake starts is to not bet at all.

MIDDLE RELIEF: -
Julian Tavarez? Not a good night for the Big Lebowski. David Aardsma and Javier Lopez had their brief moments in the sun, a walk and hit from Aardsma not withstanding, but those were overshadowed by Mike Timlin's outing, which eventually was accountable for the losing run. Not what he had in mind, for sure.

SET-UP RELIEF: N/A
The Sox never had a lead, let alone one early enough to protect it.

CLOSER: N/A
We're not typing that sentence above again. You know that's what we'd do here, anyway.

LINEUP: √+
So Manny couldn't come through with a miraculous hit. So what. The Sox, who often struggle against starters the first time they see them, got great nights from Dustin Pedroia, Coco Crisp, Alex Cora et al. in making up for ManRam's absence and a horrendous outing from Mike Lowell. It wasn't enough for a win, but it was enough to keep offensive momentum going heading to Baltimore late Sunday night for a Monday PM first pitch. Here's hoping Clay Buchholz is already hanging in the Charm City.

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Dragnet Sunday Spectacle: Sox at Twins

Being the MLB Sunday game of the week has both its advantages and disadvantages. Everyone in the country gets to watch it on ESPN. That's an advantage. The ESPN announcers are completely insipid. That's a push, because when they aren't so dross that you want to poke your ears out, they tend to spread horrendously inaccurate information or names. Having the game on ESPN brings new camera angles. That's an advantage, though we're still waiting on a roof camera at the Metrodome. Couldn't they hire a high-rise window washer to rig the camera up there or something?


Oh, but there is one horrible disadvantage: The ESPN talking  heads don't talk fishing, so WMYM won't have any clearer idea about when ice fishing season opens after the game tonight than we did before it started. That's a shame.

All of that being said, we're happy to be watching it, and happy that ESPN is slotting the Sox in the 8 p.m. slot on a non-Celtics night, though those have become oddly predictable of late, haven't they (incidentally, when was the last time that you felt absolutely certain a team would win when it was playing at home and almost absolutely sure it would lose on the road in the playoffs? Yeah, we couldn't remember either).

With a late-night flight to Baltimore in the offing, Boston is tossing Tim Wakefield, he of the preposterously efficient three-hitter last Tuesday, against a Twins pitcher named Nick Blackburn. The good news is that Wake is coming off his best outing in years after his whitewash of Detroit, though everyone knows how mercurial he can be from start to start. The bad news is that the Sox have never faced Blackburn, and just as they showed last night, Boston's record against first-time starters against them is not so sterling.

Of course, there was that night last summer of the back-to-back-to-back-to-back homers off a young Yankees pitcher on ESPN Sunday baseball. Hmmmm, and the plot thickens, no?

Well, it doesn't thicken that much. Manny Ramirez is out of the lineup tonight, so any stretch of four straight homers won't include ManRam slugging No. 498. The good news is that Ramirez's injury is only being called a hamstring strain, so it shouldn't sideline him for too long. The bad news is that the injury hardly helps the team's depth tonight, particularly hours after rookie infielder fill-in extrordinaire Jed Lowrie was sent packing back to AAA Pawtucket to make room for Alex Cora, who is starting at short tonight as Julio Lugo sits out a second-straight night following a slightly scary collision. And Bryan Corey, he of the flip-flopping uniforms and waiver-wire status, is headed to the Padres. The Sox traded him after he was outrighted to Pawtucket, with San Diego sending either a player to be named or cash back to Boston. Hard to tell if they'll get the ever elusive "player to be named" out of this deal, since it was no secret that Corey was going to be on the shuttle all year, and at any time could have been scooped up by another MLB club. Still, the improved performance of Craig Hansen likely paved the way for the deal, with Hansen giving Terry Francona and Theo Epstein a little bit of breathing room when it comes to situational righties.

Now, about that Blackburn fellow ...

No Fish Tale: Dice-K Delivers Again

It wasn't an Instant Classic, but Daisuke Matsuzaka earned his sixth win of the season on Saturday night in Minnesota. If you were watching the game on the MLB Game Plan and were forced to listen to Minnesota play-by-play men, you might not know that. But he did.

However, the opening of fishing season is evidently a much bigger deal in Minnesoata than a matchup between the Twins, featuring a young, promising home-town pitcher making his first start, and the defending World Champion Red Sox, who threw one of the most expensive imports in sports history out on the mound.

Amazingly, the pitching lived up to the billing for the most part. Outside of a dodgy second inning that was entirely too remiscent of 2007, Matsuzaka danced around the strike zone, got some batters to hack at good pitches and some, like shortstop Adam Everett, to hack at horrendous dropping off-speed magic that left him looking like an eighth grader. All-in-all, it was a positively serviceable performance.

Luckily, it was also backed by four - count them, four - solo homers as the Sox patched together a 5-2 win. It may not have been a victory with a vintage appropriate of Bordeaux, but it had positively French wine-level moments. A pair of strikeouts were chalked up to the emergence of Matsuzaka's magical changeup dubbed the "gyroball" afterward, and Dice-K wasn't counting out that possibility. The homers from Coco Crisp and Jed Lowrie in the seventh hit almost identical spots in the left field stands, and that's all Boston needed to do with Hideki Okajima and a truly, furiously pissed off Jonathan Papelbon waiting in the bullpen to close things out.

As they say in Okie and the Dice-man's homeland, that means sayonara.

Of course, all of this was overshadowed by creatures that were nowhere near the Metrodome ... fish. The Saturday morning opening of fishing season in Minnesota was first referenced in the second inning, then followed up with a strong plug for the Metrodome smoked whitefish and its role in the team's new "all you can eat seats" promotion that gets unveiled during the team's next homestand. Then, after the whole "hey, we can all go out on boats and go fishing at 5 a.m. tomorrow!" concept was fully established, the Minnesota dynamic duo officially switched over to ice fishing references in the fourth and fifth innings.

Clearly, WMYM has underestimated just how strange and solitary Minnesota can be. We'd dwell on it some more, but hey, we've got some smoked whitefish spread to get to.

STARTING PITCHING: √+
There were moments early when it looked like it was going to be a - in this slot, but as he has all season, Dice-K struck his way out of jams. He walked in the first run and gave up a second later, though that might have been avoided if Coco Crisp hadn't been in center with his pee shooter of an arm unable to throw out anyone this side of Jason Giambi when they're trying to score from second. To keep it to that point Dice-K dazzled, leaving Joe Mauer shaking his head twice and other Minnesota hitters looking truly foolish at times. Needless to say, those seven Ks helped make up for the two costly walks in the second inning and the two runs, and that paved the way to 6-0/

MIDDLE RELIEF: N/A
It's getting almost eerie that all of Boston's pitchers keep working until the eighth inning, isn't it? We're going to go ahead and pinch ourselves now so we don't ruin it before tomorrow. Yikes.

SET-UP RELIEF: √+
Okajima did it again. It's amazing. And as bad as he's made a lot of team's hitters look, Minnesota might have looked worse than any other on some of those hacks Saturday night. It was downright belittling, and that's a great thing for the Boston bullpen.

CLOSER: √+
Finally, a return to normalcy, even with the flukiest hit you'll ever see - Mike Lamb's 200-foot pop-up that hit a speaker above the infield - mixed in. And while it may have looked almost like a sigh of relief when he pumped his fist and trudged to meet Jason Varitek, there's little doubt that the game-ending strikeout helped re-establish some of Paps' luster and bluster, commodities that are as important to the Red Sox' success as anything else.

Dragnet Climbing Horses: Sox at Twins

What do you do when you blow two straight saves? You climb back on the horse.

Unlike the blurb sitting atop the boston.com Red Sox section, the Sox have NOT lost two straight. Rather, it's Jonathan Papelbon who has lost HIS last two outings, both in the bottom of the ninth, sandwiched around an efficient 5-1 victory on Thursday.


While that makes that particular section front of boston.com look moronic, it doesn't alleviate the frustration that is the current Boston predicament: The Sox have been good enough to be absolutely undefeated on a rough midwest trip so far. Instead, they're 4-2.

That's a good start, but 6-0 would have been an EXCELLENT start. Tonight, Daisuke Matsuzaka gets another chance to try and put his stamp on the team's direction. In the process he could deliver a huge victory over a Minnesota team that is proving significantly more resilient than fans and kitchen pundits of the neverending horse race that is the MLB trade market expected after what appeared a rather one-sided trade of Johan Santana to the Mets just before the season started.

Instead, reinfused with the energy of centerfielder Carlos Gomez and fellow outfielder Delmon Young - who was gleaned from the Rays for young pitcher Matt Garza - the Twins are riding high atop the AL Central, a division in which they were supposed to compete for third. At best.

One of the reasons why has been a surprisingly deep and exuberant pitching staff, which tonight showcases the season-debut of one Glen Perkins. You've got about as good an idea of how he'll do as WMYM does, but if past precedence tells us anything, it's that Boston often A) has trouble against pitchers the first time they see them and, B) it often struggles to hit well in the Metrodome.

For what it's worth, here's the lineups heading out there in the artificially clean air of Minnesota's favorite short-lived indoor monument to Hubert H. Humphrey.

So, time for another bounce back. And perhaps a chance for Paps to try and redeem himself. Again. Otherwise these two outings will be more than just a blip ... they'll be a legitimate rough patch. That's the last thing that the Sox, let alone Papelbon himself, can afford to consider.

Dominance, Thy Name is Beckett

You know that old saying about momentum being the following day's starting pitcher? Yeah, turns out there's something to that.

Not only was Josh Beckett dominant against the Tigers Thursday night - his one run came when he got a bit cocky against a bit player who hadn't started in a week and a half - he was dominant without any drama whatsoever, the diametric opposite of Tigers ace, Justin Verlander, who put in a workmanlike if unspectacular effort for Detroit in yet another losing cause.

As a result, the Sox leave the Motor City having taken an impressive three of four, and knowing that they should have taken a clean sweep. Even without Manny Ramirez in the lineup - the bopper took the night off so Coco Crisp and Jacoby Ellsbury could both get at-bats - the Boston batters strung together hits and could have done even more damage against Verlander early. After all, when they put up runs in the third, there was only one out when Varitek tagged from third with the third run of the frame on a sacrifice fly.

No matter. When Beckett is feeling it on the mound as he was Thursday, it hardly matters. And if it's pure data you want, try this number on for size. Guess how fast Beckett's change-up was moving ... 88 mph. That's right, Josh Beckett was throwing a change-up faster than Greg Maddux throws a fastball. Not to mention Brett Myers. Sheesh. Sure, his breaking pitches were much slower, more like traditional change-ups in the 70s range. When your fastballs are flying in at 95 and 96, 88 is plenty slow enough, particularly when you hide the ball so well against your body that batters can't see it anyway.

Momentum, you are a starting pitcher indeed. So, how you feeling Jon Lester?

STARTING PITCHING: √+
Well, we've already been raving about it, so let's just drop the actual numbers out there and let them speak for themselves. Seven innings, 6 hits, 1 run, 8 strikeouts. That's right, more strikeouts than hits. Again. Oh, and no walks. Evidently Beckett doesn't do walks anymore. They're beneath him.

MIDDLE RELIEF: N/A
No need when Beckett's dealing, even against a lineup like Detroit's.

SET-UP RELIEF: √+
Craig Hansen picked up where Beckett left off, tossing an inning of perfect ball. Three batters faced, three batters down. Twelve pitches, and nothing from anyone to make it look like they were catching up to his stuff.

CLOSER: A night after Jonathan Papelbon got tagged with both horrendous luck and a tough loss, the Manny Delcarmen reclamation project resumed. This time, it brought along with it some positive results ... a save, and only one batter beyond the minimum, on a hit that nearly was an out in itself. That's a big step in the right direction for Delcarmen, who needs a couple more outings like that to truly be considered back on his game. Still, a good start is a good start.

Bad Luck, Bad Loss

And to think, WMYM was sitting here, watching the eighth inning escape and thinking about all the possible platitudes to work into a headline. Heroic comeback? There's one possibility. Resiliency? Another. In fact, what the Red Sox did until the bottom of the ninth, rallying back three times, covering for a young starter who couldn't outfox a veteran lineup more than once, all of that proved that Boston has a certain versatility it hasn't shown a lot of in the early going.


Instead, a lucky Detroit bounce, a horrendous Julio Lugo error and a terrific piece of veteran, defensive hitting from Placido Polanco conspired to make Jonathan Papelbon a loser with a blown save for the first time since last September. You know what? It really did hurt as much as it looked like, too.

But first, one thing needs to be made clear: While Papelbon will get credited with the loss, the blown save and loss were hardly his fault. After allowing an inning-starting single to Matt Joyce which was a truly random stroke of luck - Joyce made contact on a purely defensive half-cut swing that he tried to check, producing an unfieldable dribbler - Papelbon got old friend Edgar Renteria to hit into a picture perfect double play.

Of course, that's when Lugo booted the bouncer, just the latest error in his season of misadventures in the field. It's getting ugly out there for the shortstop whose substantially subpar first season at the plate was made up for by surprisingly solid defense.

A year later, he's falling into the exact opposite trap. On Wednesday night, that trap ensnared the Red Sox, spoiling a terrific rally when - after a Pudge Rodriguez sacrifice moved runners along - Curtis Granderson finished an 0-fer day with a tying-run producing groundout and Polanco came through with his bloop hit above the outstretched glove of a leaping Lugo (sounds like an item from the 12 Days of Christmas, doesn't it?).

"We had a great comeback and we couldn't finish it," Terry Francona told the AP.

Damn right you did, Terry. Damn right you did.

STARTING PITCHING: -
What did young Clay Buchholz learn tonight? Well, hopefully he learned that you can fool a good lineup once, but not twice, especially when they're desperate to rejuvenate their attack. After looking dazzled the first time he faced them, the Detroit hitters came alive in the bottom of the third, racking up four runs to take control. Then they got to him again in the bottom of the fourth. It was a definite setback after two sterling starts and a trend that had Buchholz heading aggressively in the right direction. Now, after allowing 10 hits in only four innings, the question will be whether its a blip on the radar screen or catalyst for change in the wrong direction. Here's hoping for the former, for Buchholz's case and the Sox'.

MIDDLE RELIEF: -
It's not a fair grade for David Aardsma or Javier Lopez, both of whom tossed single shutout innings, two more walks from Aardsma not withstanding. Still, Julian Tavarez was so bad that no other grade would do. Three runs in a single inning, and it was almost a miracle that there weren't more from the Big Lebowski. It's been amazing how little work Tavarez has racked up this year, largely because of the ability of the team's regular starters to go so deep into games. Unfortunately, it looks like that rest isn't helping a guy like Tavarez, who despite a general sense of flexibility in role may need just enough of a routine to cast himself in one direction or another.

SET-UP RELIEF: √-
Hideki Okajima got it done, but there was a heck of a lot of drama for an Oki appearance. First the ever so rare back-to-back hits against, to start the inning no less. Then, after a timely strikeout, Oki got himself into plenty of trouble against Gary Sheffield. Amazingly, he wriggled out of that one with a strikeout as only he can pull off, then finished off the inning when a Jason Varitek bullet comprised the second half of a beautiful strike 'em out throw 'em out twin killing. Don't get us wrong, this could have been a disaster, and when it comes to executing pitches, Papelbon probably got the job done better than Okajima did tonight. Still, baseball is a results business, so drama aside, Okie had to earn some kind of a √. There you go, √- it is.

CLOSER: -
Here's another grade that may not be fair, as discussed in so much more depth above. It is what it is, and the only way Papelbon's earning a - is with a blown save. Well, tonight he got a blown save, ergo tonight he got a -. Frustrating? Yes. Unfair, yes. That's the way the cookie crumbles after a crushing loss and melodramatic end to a terrific winning streak.

LINEUP: √+
Now THAT was a terrific offensive performance. The Sox hitters got better as the game went along, were resourceful, were pests on the base paths and rallied thrice. The final rally, with Dustin Pedroia plating the go-ahead run in the top of the 8th, was completely deflating to the Detroit crowd. It might have been a real long-term Tiger killer if not for the ninth inning rally, too. Alas, the one time when, in retrospect, the Sox needed more turned out to be the one time they didn't have any more to give ... in the top of the ninth when an insurance run would have been a huge buffer. They had a man on second with one out. That's where he finished the inning. If we're to be fair, that means that his final station short of home is part of the reason this one is chalked up in the "L" column instead of the one on the left.

Dragnet Motor City Momentum: Sox at Tigers

Tonight, the Sox win streak has a chance to reach six-sided di proportions, for those of you who happen to be inclined toward Dungeons and Dragons references. For those of you who aren't, i.e., everyone, we're just trying to say that Boston has won five straight, and one more makes it an even half-dozen.

Clay Buchholz was on the mound when this whole movement got started, so he's the one who gets to try and keep it rolling a second time through the rotation. He has a very worthy young adversary in the opposing bullpen, with Armando Gallaraga tossing the pill for Detroit. To say that Gallaraga has been a bright spot of the Detroit rotation in the early season is a vast understatement. He's 2-1 with a 1.88 ERA, and he's been every bit as impressive as those numbers seem to say he is.

It'll also be interesting to see what the Detroit lineup does against Buchholz, since this will is their maiden voyage against his Bugs Bunny curve and change-up. The results the second time around against Tampa were nearly as good as the first - in fact the final result was better, of course - so it may be that opposing hitters don't gain a ton off him in seeing him more. Or maybe they do and we haven't seen enough repeat feats to judge Buchholz's second-time effectiveness.

Either way, the Sox hitters will have to find tip offs from Gallaraga for the first time tonight, too. That might just slow them down, considering the fact that they've been teeing off against Detroit's first two offerings - Jeremy Bonderman and Nate Robertson - and have seemed to have a bit of a tougher time against rookie pitchers in recent years.

Of course, you wouldn't have known that from watching Manny last night, would you? Regardless, here's the lineups for the Sox and Tigers again tonight, assuming they get the game in, of course. There's a tarp on top of Comerica Field right now, and tarps are never a good thing.

Like Surfers, Riding a Great Wake

A couple quick points that absolutely have to be mentioned before getting into some quick grades. Big primary/Celtics playoff nights will do that to the best of us, even if - like WMYM - you do blow off the first half of the C's face off to make sure you catch all nine Sox innings.


-- Wakefield looked better than he has since '97. Did anyone see that coming? We sure as hell didn't. He was absolutely unhittable.

-- Kevin Cash is hitting .362? With a .472 slugging? Really? Is everyone else as shocked about this as WMYM is?

-- Those back-to-back David Ortiz-Manny Ramirez blasts were the biggest set of consecutive bombs dropped by that duo since Cleveland last year in the ALCS. Those shots were CRUSHED. The fact that ManRam knocked out 497 on the first pitch ever offered by a recent call-up from the minors is almost painful to watch. Just makes you cringe.

-- The play-by-play and color duo on Fox Sports Net Detroit are approximately an 18 on the 1-10 unintentional comedy scale. At one point, color commentator Rod Allen called Cy Young's 1908 hairstyle "fried, died and cut down the middle". After trying to not act surprised, play-by-play guy Rod Impemba finally gave up and had him explain the phrase, and it still made no sense. The two seem so ill fit that they're actually mildly entertaining to listen to, and not nearly as homer-ish as most team's (cough, cough, AL East rivals, cough) duos. A nice change of pace.

STARTING PITCHING: √+
Like we said earlier, best Wakefield start in a decade. Seriously. He was that good. Wake had a one-hitter entering the eighth, and he did that WITH NO WALKS!! You know how hard it is to throw a knuckleballing one-hitter without any walks? It's impossible, that's how hard it is. Well, eventually it became a two-hitter ... again WITHOUT ANY WALKS! Say what you will, but the way Wakefield had the flutterball going today, he was as effective as any pitcher in the bigs. Want more proof? Just consider that the game lasted only a few minutes more than two hours, yet the Sox constantly had runners all over the bases and scored five runs. End of discussion.

MIDDLE RELIEF: N/A
How many times have we been able to say that lately? If there were any question about just how effective the starting pitching has been over the past couple weeks, it can easily be traced back in our postgame breakdowns. That's a true testament.

SET-UP RELIEF: N/A
Another day, another chance for the end of 'pen guys to take a breather.

CLOSER: √
Mike Timlin gave up a single to his first batter, which is always a bit of a concern with a guy who labors like Timlin does. Still, he immediately settled and induced a double play, then finished things off with a pop up. Against bats like Detroit's, that counts as a very solid outing from a guy still making his way back to full strength and re-defining his role.

LINEUP: √
This should probably be a √+ again, but the Sox just left too many runners on. This easily could have been an 8-0 or 9-0 game after the fifth inning, yet Boston failed to capitalize on the batters who reached base without outs. Or with only one out. It's starting to become a bit of a recurring problem. Still, the Big Papi and ManRam homers are nice to see, particularly the Ramirez shot, which, if nothing else, gets him one dinger closer to 500 and getting that monkey off his bat. You can practically see it swinging off his bat right now, so the sooner it's over with, the better he'll start looking. Also, Julio Lugo continues to impress everyone, right? Sure, the errors are up, but so is the batting average and, even more impressive, the OBP. Just when you're ready to hand the job over the Jed Lowrie, Lugo starts playing pissed and looks like the guy Bill James has been lusting over all these years. 

Dragnet Detroit Roar: Sox at Tigers

Sure, the mascot should be the thing roaring, but they're already in the second half of the post's title. Headline writing people. It's an amazing, sometimes counterintuitive thing.

Alright, now that the non-cogent aside of the day is out of the way, let's get down to business: A Tim Wakefield start against the Tigers, whose lineup shakedown didn't exactly light up the scoreboard last night. Despite Daisuke Matsuzaka's mighty struggles, the team whose name sounds like an A.A. Milne characted played more like an A.A. Milne character. Needless to say, they weren't exactly overwhelming.

That being said, a slow (but he's crafty!), old (but he's crafty!), knuckleballing (but he's crafty!) starter like Wake might be just what Detroit needs to get re-tracked. It's painful for WMYM to say, what with the personal catcher adulation and all, but hey, it is what it is. Comerica Park doesn't exactly make it easier, either.

Of course, there is the rejuvenated Boston lineup to back him, and this is a team that Jim Leyland has yet to beat up player-by-player yet, so things could be interesting and high scoring early. The Red Sox should just consider themselves lucky that Leyland has yet to launch into his annual campaign of scaring his stars into better performances with the unbearable stench of cigar smoke and parchesi. As soon as that hits the fan, it's all over. They're going to be nasty.

Sox fans just hope that doesn't happen tonight.

Oh, and Nate Robertson is starting for the Tiggers, and he's 1-3 with a 6.82 ERA. So Boston has that going for it.

There was other news from the daytime circuit, with Curt Schilling returning to the field for the first time since his shoulder surgery. Unfortunately, there's not too much to get excited about. He essentially played catch with pitching coach John Farrell, making their six-minute session of 60-foot toss one of the more highly-covered bouts of afternoon soft toss in history. At least that's our story.

Also, Alex Cora and Sean Casey are both nearing AAA returns, which would be the next step to both returning to the Sox big league roster, bringing a hasty conclusion to yet another early season bullpen pitcher. Keep eyes peeled on Craig Hansen and Manny Delcarmen. Either could move up or down in Terry Francona and Brad Mills' estimation, which could be make or break.

Ugly. Sporadic. Win.

It's counterintuitive, but the truth is that there are points during a long season where you need to see that headline.

That's right, folks, the Red Sox won ugly last night. Dasiuke Matsuzaka struggled mightily with his control - even by his standards - allowing a whopping eight walks in five innings. Eight walks. Seriously. Amazingly, he also allowed only one run. Seriously. As he's shown an even better penchant for this year than during his first campaign, Dice-K wriggled out of trouble time and time again, with key strikeouts and a remarkable rash of Tiger pop ups. Somehow, he walked almost an entire round of the Detroit lineup, yet still held a lineup expected to score 1,000 runs this season to a single plate crossing.

Luckily, Nate Robertson wasn't better. In fact, he was worse, serving up a serious meatball of a fastball for Mike Lowell's first RBI of the year, then repeating the delivery ALMOST EXACTLY to Kevin Youkilis innings later. Talk about not learning from mistakes. It certainly makes it more clear why Jim Leyland has become so frustrated with Robertson during his third season managing the immensely talented yet mercurial and inconsistent would-be ace.

Instead of capitalizing on a flock of ducks on the pond, the Tigers went right on missing them like a blind Nintendo fan shooting in early 90s Duck Hunt. Then, when they mounted a rally against Craig Hansen - great for one inning, horrible for two (take note Terry Francona) - they couldn't solve Hideki Okajima, unlike how Boston solved Detroit reliever Clay Rapada, whose funky delivery was positively terrifying, yet produced remarkably hittable pitches.

So there you go. A relatively eventful night for the pitchers that produced little more than scratch marks. A remarkably smooth night for hitters which saw David Ortiz, Mike Lowell and Kevin Youkilis add to their recent on-track trajectories.

And in the end, it's a win. That's all that matters, and it's worth remembering.


STARTING PITCHING: √
Well, he earned his fifth win. Barely. Still, Dice-K tossed 109 pitches in five innings. Eight walks. And his butt-wiggle was clearly off. CLEARLY off. Still, like we said earlier, a win is a win. And he's 5-0. That's worth a lot in WMYM's book. Especially against a lineup like Detroit's.

MIDDLE RELIEF: √
So, Craig Hansen gets charged with two runs, but he could have gotten out unscathed. One of his walks could have been a strikeout. Just saying. The more significant step in the uber-prospect's latest major league stint was his first inning, in which he set down the Tigers with AUTHORITY. If he can keep delivering shut down performances, even for a single inning, that would be an enormous boost for the bullpen. Manny Delcarmen, it's your move kid.

SET-UP RELIEF: √
Okajima allowed a pair of runs, but they weren't his, and if you haven't noted that tendency in his performances, well, you haven't been watching closely enough. He more than redeemed that shaky frame with the eighth, in which he blew back through the Tigers and set the stage for Jonathan Papelbon. Speaking of which ...

CLOSER: √+
Is it possible that any other closer in baseball is more dominant that Paps right? We think not. One inning, 13 pitches, 10th save. Seems safe to say that his early-season rough patch was just an absolute blip on the radar.

LINEUP: √+
Six runs is usually a borderline √+ for the powerful Boston bats, but against Robertson, and with the control they showed, it certainly warrants the grade tonight. Making the outing better was the continued improvement of Youkilis (if that's even possible), Lowell (in both health and performance) and Ortiz, who despite his relatively meager season stats is rounding into form with one of the hottest stretches at the plate from across the bigs. Equally shocking is Big Papi's prospective RBI total if he keeps up his current pace ... 126. Seriously. Just imagine what'll happen if he gets back to his traditional season averages.