Misery Loves Company: Two Guys Watch Baseball

Games 128-130 - Red Sox

Red Sox 6, Mariners 4
Red Sox 7, Mariners 6
Red Sox 6, Mariners 1
Record: 75-55
AL East: 5 GB NYY
Wild Card T1 - Oak

One of two possible explanations exists for the Sox recent string of victories against Seattle and Oakland: a) I'm an idiot, and wrote them off way too early, or b) I'm a genius, and my sky-is-falling, season-is-over entry provided substantial reverse psychology mojo. It has to be the latter, right? I mean, I'm a lot of things, but an idiot?

As it turns out, I also lied about the whole "losses hurt less wins aren't as great" thing, too. These wins were pretty damn great, coming as they did against the toughest teams in the league, and combining as they did great, timely, hitting and really solid pitching. Derek Lowe's given up 1 run in 13 1/3 innings against Oakland and Seattle. If that D-Lowe is back, the Sox all of a sudden have a strong rotation. Jeff Suppan finally showed why the Sox obtained him, going 6 2/3 innings with only 2 earned runs to earn the win in the first game against the M's. John Burkett wasn't great, but he kept the Sox in another game, despite not having very good stuff in the 7-6 win. In fact, the only sour note has been B.H. Kim's rough week.

The Korean sidearmer blew a save against Oaktown, and then another against Seattle. The team is writing it off to arm fatigue and claiming that all he needs is rest - which he got last night. I'd like to believe that - hell, even Mariano Rivera's had some spotty patches in the last few weeks - but I hope the naysayers are wrong about Kim's big game makeup. Twice on Saturday he had 2-strike counts with two outs, and twice he laid meatballs right over the plate, allowing first Mark McLemore and then Mike Cameron to reach base and McLemore to score on Cameron's 1-2 single. As Kevin Millar says, it's time for Kim to "cowboy up".

In other news, Pedro's angry again - this time at the Boston media and talk show fans for questioning whether he was actually sick last week when he missed a start. An angry Pedro is often an awesome Pedro, although his anger isn't usually directed at "internal" constituencies. At some point Seattle has to break its 11-game losing streak to the slender Dominican - I just hope it isn't today.