Kashmir

Game 16 - Red Sox

Devil Rays 5, Red Sox 1
W: Kazmir (2-1)
L: Wakefield (1-3)
Sv: Miceli (4)
Record: 11-5

A hearty round of thanks to the Wilpons from this side of the MLC aisle follows on the heels of my colleague's recent similarly-focused rant. That Victor Zambrano for Scott Kazmir trade has really paid dividends for the entire MLC family in the past several days.

Devil Ray lefty Scott Kazmir continued his relative domination of the Sox last night, spinning 5 2/3 4-hit innings (and leaving only because he got cramps in his hand and fingers - aside: other than chronic masturbators, who gets cramps in their hand and fingers?) as the Sox kept their appointment for the scheduled Wakefield-inspired offensive sabbatical. Boston bats have now tallied 9 runs in Wake's 4 starts, and 5 in his 3 losses. He's gone 17 innings in his last 2 outings, giving up a total of 4 earned runs, and he's 0-2 for his troubles.

Also, in an entirely related note, Josh Bard still sucks.

Continuing with the early-season theme of turning lemons into lemonade, the Sox once again scrapped to the game's final out, loading the bases in the bottom of the 9th with 1 out, and bringing Trot Nixon to the plate as the tying run. (Former Metfave Ty Wigginton was a huge boon for the Sox in this series, making 3 errors that helped the Sox extend rallies - his boot of a potential game-ending double play last night made the 9th inning far more interesting than it probably should have been.) Trotman didn't dog it, expending a substantial amount of (misplaced) energy trying to tie the score with 1 swing when a base hit could have ignited a rally, but I can't fault his effort. Jason Varitek popped to short left to end the game, and the Sox lost a game that they deserved to lose.

Julian Tavarez continued a different early-season theme, that of the middle of the bullpen impersonating FEMA officials in the midst of a crisis and turning negative situations into full-fledged apocolypses. The Sox trailed by 2 entering the 9th, but came to the plate in the bottom of the frame down 4 thanks to a collection of Tavarez meatballs that would make the Swedish Chef's mouth water. Tavarez and Seanez and Riske, oh my.

On the road again to Toronto, with 3 tough pitching matchups facing the offensively-challenged Sox in the form of A.J. Burnett (tonight against his former teammate Josh Beckett), Roy Halladay, and Josh Towers. Sure would be nice if Messrs. Ramirez and Varitek found their strokes in time to give the pitching staff a bit of a break.