Misery Loves Company: Two Guys Watch Baseball

Game 58 - Red Sox

Pirates 5, Red Sox 4
Record: 33-25

Crappy loss to a crappy team compounded by the fact that crappy Ramiro Mendoza was in the game to take the loss. John Burkett was his typical aggravating self, allowing a bunch of baserunners and 4 runs, but pitching juuuust well enough to (probably) keep his spot in the rotation. Then, Mendoza pitched a scoreless 7th before putting runners on 1st and 3rd with one out in the 9th. Alan Embree came in, but couldn't stop the runner on 3rd from scoring to give the Bucs the margin of victory. Why on God's Green Earth is the team's worst freaking pitcher called on to pitch in the late innings of a tie game? If that's not a Bill Jamesian high leverage situation, I don't know what is. Where were Lyon, Timlin, Embree, or even Seanez to start the 8th? Dammit, Grady, these games all count.

This morning brings the revelation that Pedro Martinez thinks that the media is being hard on Sammy Sosa because he's black and latin, and that if Pedro were not the same ethnic combo, he would have won the Cy Young last year. I happen to believe that he's wrong on the first issue - the media noise is massive because there is simply so much media trying to be heard - and right on the second. If Roger Clemens had posted Pedro's 2002 numbers, he would have won his 7th Cy Young, hands down. I don't know if this means that the media is inherently racist, or if the natural inclination is to subconciously support those who look more like ourselves, but I think Pedro's got a point.