These Are the Ones That Really Hurt!: Peter

Well, Jenn, between the ribs and Mom's fruit salad, you saw it with me. There we were, Sox up one zip into the 7th and Bucky throws over to first, past Lowell and by the time Pena (pride of Haverhill, MA) stops running, it's a two base error. A sacfly foul that JD made a great catch on and it's tied. Not to worry, we figured. I'm repeating as Martinez comes to bat in the 8th, "Let's hope he remembers yesterday"--and he does!Here's the pitch--it's a fast ball, letter high out over the middle of the plate and Martinez swings--and a second later it's ten rows deep in the right center seats--TWO ONE, SOX! Unfortunately, in the Rays' half of the inning, Bucky makes one more mistake and Upton takes him deep--two all. In spite of all of this, Bucky gets an ND and does pretty well, lowering his ERA to 2.21, still by far the AL best. That's the way it stays until the bottom of the 10th. The Rays' DH comes up; some guy both of us and God knows how many others as well have never heard of, Johnson.His season BA is .149 and his slugging (a misnomer in his case, you would think) average is an equally anemic .298. He has only one HR for the whole season, for Christ's sake. Atch throws the ball--and the game is over! Bang! Home run! Now he has two for the year! By the way, those averages are AFTER the HR. He was marginally worse before that swing!
Now, Jenn, I know you keep faulting the Sox for leaving starters in too long, but today's players are better conditioned than those of my youth and before, and those guys routinely had 15 or 20 COMPLETE games every year, win or lose! Some of those were for extra innings too! This pitch count stuff is bull! But with the salaries the teams have invested, they're afraid to let the pitchers go as long as their bodies will permit. The result--self fulfilling prophecies--and few of them good!
If all of this weren't bad enough, my old "if all of both teams' men on base had scored, the Sox walk away 10-7 winners. They out hit the Rays, they just didn't do it in as timely a fashion. Well, tomorrow is another chance to leave Tampa "just" 4.5behind with 31 games left. It's still possible, but those games are getting fewer and fewer.