Misery Loves Company: Two Guys Watch Baseball

Games 110 & 111 - Red Sox
Dog Day Afternoon

Devil Rays 8, Red Sox 3
Red Sox 8, Devil Rays 4
Record: 61-50
August Record: 5-4

Wait, you mean the Sox blew a chance to go on a three-game winning streak by choking away a game against a mediocre opponent, even though they had their best pitcher on the mound? Feh. I can't even work up the righteous indignation to make that sentence worth a crap. How is it possible to care so much about something and not at all - at the same time?

After 4 innings last night, the Sox had sent 12 men to the plate against Jorge Sosa (I don't know who he is, either) and 12 men had returned to the bench without reaching base. David Ortiz led off the 5th with a single - the same Ortiz who's now batting cleanup because Terry Francona's decided to make Manny Ramirez as uncomfortable as possible as punishment for the league's second-worst haircut - and came around to score on Jason Varitek's two-run double, and the floodgates were open in support of Bronson Arroyo.

Speaking of Arroyo - and almost nobody in baseball is - I'll give you a shiny new penny if you had any idea that he had the 16th best ERA in the American League (4.14), stood 9th in the AL in strikeouts (102), K/9 (7.55) and K/BB (2.76), and was the best starter in the AL since the All-Star break as measured by the extremely esoteric Defense Independent Pitching Statistic (DIPS) ERA. Don't ask. Arroyo is clearly the Sox no. 3 starter at the moment, and only his misleadingly poor win/loss record (5-8) is keeping him from garnering more notice for the very effective season he's posting. Hey! A bright spot.

I've really got a whole lot of nothing else to say about this team right now - at least nothing that I haven't already said ad nauseum in the paragraphs below this one. Is it football season yet?