Crash

Game 149 - Red Sox

Royals 12, Red Sox 9

Record: 89-50

Yeah, all that stuff I said about catching the Yankees? The lesson, as always...wait a minute. That lesson's wrong. This one's not my fault. The Sox had 6-0 and 8-2 leads on the Royals on a night the Yankees lost, and you want to blame this one on me? Oh, hell no.

Let's put blame where blame is due, friends. And blame is due Manny Delcarmen, for whom the bell is beginning to toll as his ERA rises. Delcarmen ended June allowing 2.03 earned runs per 9 innings. After his 3 1/3 innings of 8 ER shitshow in September (which followed his increasingly mediocre July and August efforts), the Beantown local carries a 4.34 ERA. More importantly, his confidence in his ability to get outs appears to be on par with mine. We already have one Ebby Calvin on this team, so Delcarmen may get saddled with an even worse moniker: 26th man on the postseason roster. (Which is only 25 men deep, for our math-challenged friends.)

Magic number for the postseason is still 7. But it's good that we're finding out now who we can count on in October.