Vazquez, domes still bad news
It's easy to get up in arms over
another big-game disappointment from Javier Vazquez, but I'm finding it difficult to get all that upset. The Rays had dome-field advantage and their best starter plenty rested; the Sox were throwing out their worst of all realistic options.
The Sox lost by two, which sounds about right.
Now, had Ozzie Guillen prepared to use Vazquez for Game 5 (if necessary) -- that would've raised the ol' blood pressure.
Guillen's smarter than that, though:
"We have to sit down and talk about it," Guillen said. "I don't want to lose faith in Javy, but it's something that's on our mind. If we get to a Game 5, I might start with [ Mark] Buehrle. I don't know yet. But you know it's going to be on my mind."
Ozzie leaves it open-ended, but it'd take a complete and utter flop by Buehrle for Vazquez to get the ball again. And even then, it might be Clayton Richard instead.
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In hindsight, maybe Richard was the better choice to start Game 1. There were reasons for it -- Richard fared extremely well in his last start against the Yankees, who have similar struggles against left-handed pitching as the Rays.
But Richard needed Octavio Dotel to bail him out of the eighth inning after the Rays started making increasingly better contact, and he had thrown 60 pitches in just 3 1/3 innings. That was generally the story for most of his starts -- out of the gates quickly, until he ran into a wall. Had Richard faced B.J. Upton instead of Dotel, Thursday may have ended the same way.
That said, it was an excellent outing by Richard, who has now tied together a couple strong long relief coutings. Considering he was an afterthought in Birmingham at the start of the season and is still awkward on and around the mound, he's been a fairly quick learner.
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And let's not leave the offense out of it. When another afterthought -- this one a 30-year-old minor-league journeyman outfielder -- drives in 75 percent of the runs, that isn't going to work, either.
Especially since Dewayne Wise won't be in today's lineup.
Nick Swisher will start in left instead to face left-handed Scott Kazmir. The most interesting excerpt from that story:
Sox general manager Kenny Williams said there's a mechanical flaw in
Swisher's swing. It can be corrected, Williams assured, but not until
the off-season.
To my untrained eye, my guess is that he's pulling off the ball. Either way, it's slightly curious that the mystery flaw is untouchable until the end of the season (coughgregwalkercough), but what do I know?
But while on the subject of Swisher, it's remarkable how similar his season has been to Kosuke Fukudome's. I watched the second half of the Cubs game after the vice presidential debate and watched Fukudome go 0-for-4 with a hat trick. Two of the strikeouts were backwards Ks.
Swisher is hitting .191 in the second half; Fukudome hit .217.
Ozzie said of Swisher's benching, "I don't want you to come here asking me why I'm not playing, why I did this, because I don't want to deal with that."
Lou Piniella pulled Fukudome from the NLDS Game 3 lineup, saying, "From now on, I don't want to hear about Fukudome anymore as far as whether he's going to play or not."
And I thought both were going to be tremendous additions to their respective teams. So, once again, what do I know?
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Moving on to Game 2, this series has some ominous overtones to the last series the Sox played indoors -- when they were swept at the hands of the Minnesota Twins in the Metrodome.
Vazquez started the three-game set off by
lasting only 4 1/3 innings, putting the game out of reach just after its halfway point. Buehrle then had the second game,
in which he had a favorable pitching matchup, and yet still ended up on the losing end despite a fine effort.
On paper, Buehrle has the upper hand over Scott Kazmir. Kazmir has been beat up in two of his last three starts, sandwiching six shutout innings against the Twins with a pair of outings in which he gave up four homers apiece.
He has a 5.19 ERA in September thanks to nine homers and 15 walks in 26 innings.
The Sox struggled to reach base against Shields because 1) he's good, and 2) he doesn't walk anybody. Kazmir issues plenty of free passes, especially of late, so the Swisher sub should pay dividends if Kazmir keeps pitching like he has.
Buehrle, meanwhile, is pitching on full rest after a tremendous short-rest effort in the first of three consecutive elimination games the Sox won. Richard showed him the formula for success, so if he can locate that cutter/slider and curve away from the Rays' left-handed batters, he has a good chance to even up the series.
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On a final note, I'm trying to figure out
what Joe Cowley is actually suggesting:
The Sox needed to send a message over the next few innings that they
are the "bad boys of baseball,'' not the Rays, but didn't. That was
disappointing. Losing a game is one thing, but letting a young team
feel like they punked you on top of it? Unacceptable.
I... I'm at a loss. Especially since the fact that the Rays won is the only reason why the Sox were "punked," whatever that means in this context. If the Sox scored four off Dan Wheeler, I'm sure the jawing and glaring would take a backseat to the fairly impressive comeback.
But
since my language was called into question a couple days ago, I'd just like to point out that "nut up" and "Balfour tasted himself some more" made it into the blog of a major metro newspaper. That's kind of neat. And sad.