A Wild Boston Loss...Twins 4 Red Sox 2

I'm back from my 24 hours of spamness, imposed by blogger dot com's automated computers. As Sully (see his link on my link list, Sul Dog, about two thirds of the way down...he's the best) said, my blog is the farthest a blog could be from spam. Computers make mistakes just like people do. Oh well, enough about that. It was an ugly and cringe-inducing night at the Metrodome on Wednesday as the Boston Red Sox fell to the Minnesota Twins by a score of 4-2. Daisuke Matsuzaka still has not found his rythym, only going five innings and having to throw 102 pitches, 63 for strikes. Too many of those balls were wild pitches and Delcarmen and Masterson didn't help matters much at all. I think it's amazing the Twinkies did not score more...they had runners all over the place. Clearly, Matsuzaka has to get his act together. Is his ineffectiveness due to the World Baseball Classic? No one can answer that...yet. He said this after his horrid outing...

“I think today deciding to challenge early in the count, or not to, I didn’t do that very well,” Matsuzaka said. “Sometimes when I wanted to challenge early in the count, I pitched a little too patiently, and then other times when I needed to be a little bit more patient, I rushed with my out pitches a little bit.

He should attack the darn strike zone more instead of nibbling. Folks, this one was ugly, played at a snail's pace as so many of Daisuke's starts are. It was his third loss. He didn't lose his third game until September last year...this year is different. Way different.

It day baseball for the final game in Minneapolis. The first pitch will be thrown at 1:10pm EDT. It'll be Beckett facing Swarzak. We need a win and a vintage Beckett outing. Let it be.

Thanks for stopping in on this gloomy Thursday morning. Boston is now tied with the pinstripers for first place. NY is a strong team. The most important thing for Boston right now and for the rest of the season is to get more consistantly good pitching from their starters. The bullpen is there but the rotation guys have to STEP UP!! Click on this post's title for more Sox news and as always, BE WELL. GO SOX.