Dice Rolls A Hard Eight--Peter

In Vegas parlance, 'rolling a hard eight' is when the person throwing the dice gets a pair of fours. Also called making eight the hard way, it usually occurs when the person needing to hit eight for his winning number gets the pair of fours, or the thrower and anyone else taking the bet has bet that the next throw will be a hard eight.

Unfortunately, on Dice-K's return to the rotation from the DL, the 'hard eight' was not a good thing--far from it. Dice pitched an inning plus, giving up four runs in each of the first two innings the Cards faced him. This was capped by Troy Glaus' grand slam in the second, after which the Diceman was gone. His overall numbers for the appearance were equally appalling--six hits, three walks and seven earned runs in one plus innings. For this appearance alone, his WHIP is an astronomical 9.0, while the ERA for today only is 63.00!! This raised his season's ERA to a season high 3.46. While we're on the 'hard eight' theme, his prior record for 2008, 8-0, is no more either.

Bright lights for the Sox included in the bullpen Aardsma's perfect three K inning and Hansen's inning of shutout relief. Offensively, Drew picked up his 14th HR. Other than that, Sox bats were pretty hollow sounding, as they collected only a total of six hits in the game. Admittedly, with two thirds of those being for extra bases, there was some good wood on the ball, but way too little. This is the second consecutive game against the Cards this has happened. The last time El Birdos (thank you, Sporting News) landed in the Fens they lost games 1 & 2 of the '04 Series on the way to being swept by the Sox. A return to that flavor would be much appreciated tomorrow.