Results tagged “bradpenny”

Well, so much for convincingly burying the Rays this week.

A few hiccups aside, Beckett and Lester have been more than fine. Tim Wakefield is back. Clay Buchholz is doing better than we expected. Unfortunately, you need a five-man rotation in this day and age (somewhere up there, Pud Galvin just snorted derisively), and that fifth starter has proved elusive all year for the Sox. Brad Penny was just sent packing. Daisuke Matsuzaka isn't ready. And Junichi Tazawa sure wasn't the answer last night, burying the Sox in a 9-0 hole in the fourth inning.

Penny, Bowden overwhelmed by Yankees The Red Sox ability to beat the Yankees has evaporated, and after Friday's almost indescribable 20-11 loss, the Yankees look unstoppable. It pains Bostonist to type such heretical words. PatriotLedger.com called it "one of the worst pitching performances in franchise history." You wanna argue with that?

So let's just hope the Sox aren't 12 games out by then. The Sox' woeful recent history in Tropicana Field continued last night, as the Rays jumped out to a lead and held on for a 6-4 victory and a 2-game sweep.

Are we in the pennant race yet? Because whatever it is the Red Sox are racing towards, it doesn't feel like a pennant. They're 3-8 in their last eleven games, they're failing against an Oakland/Baltimore portion of the schedule that seemed designed to give them some momentum coming out of the All-Star Break, and they're exposing serious flaws in almost every aspect of the game that isn't named Josh Beckett.

Hey, after five consecutive losses to Texas and Toronto, Red Sox fans will take any kind of win from a Brad Penny start. Even against a Baltimore Orioles squad that the Globe says Boston is 28-6 against in their last 34 games. However, if Penny reaches the seventh inning allowing one unearned run on five hits in every start then you can expect to see him get the ball every fifth day. Penny had already thrown 76 pitches in the fourth inning but somehow managed to stay around long enough to hit 97 mph in the seventh innning.

As a wise man once said, "sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes the bar, welll, he eats you." Yesterday, the bar ate the Red Sox, as they couldn't solve Jays starter Mark Rzepczynski and couldn't overcome an outing in which Brad Penny turned into Bad Penny. Throw in defensive miscues like the one pictured here, and it all added up to a frustrating 6-2 loss in Toronto.

The newest Celtic hit town yesterday. With his three-man recruiting committee by his side (we wonder how much guts it would take to turn down a job when Paul, Ray and Kevin come to your interview), Rasheed Wallace met the press and said everything we like to hear when a new guy comes to town. WEEI has a transcript of most of those things. He says he felt Boston gave him the best chance to win, he's looking forward to playing with KG every night, he (for the moment, anyway) doesn't care whether he starts or how much he plays. Sheed will wear #30 for the Green, which has had a really rough stretch since M.L. Carr took it off in 1985. Mark Blount and Sebastian Telfair were the latest to wear it. We hope Wallace does better things, but frankly, we don't see how he couldn't.

The Sox are home, everyone's pumped for the Fourth of July, the weather is finally something not to be suicidal about...everything's great. Except that the Sox can't seem to beat Seattle.

The last time the Red Sox played in Washington, D.C., Rogelio Moret got a complete game win on home runs by Joe Lahoud and Rico Petrocelli. A 32-year-old Carl Yastrzemski batted third and went 0-for-3. In other words, it was a long time ago. Back in the nation's capital, the Sox took a little time to assert themselves, but that's what they did, unloading on the hapless Nationals bullpen to run away with an 11-3 drubbing of the worst team in baseball.

By our unofficial calculations, 18.5 million people have gone to games at Fenway since the last time you could actually show up, cash in hand, and get a seat. That's more than the population of Chile or Greece. The Sox notched their 500th sellout in a row last night. And the fans, who came to celebrate that nice round number, got two for one, as Brad Penny got his 100th career win, beating Florida 6-1.

The Red Sox clearly felt their happy fans needed a little tension and drama last night. Why not? The Sox have proven so far this year that they can beat the Yankees in blowouts, in pitching masterpieces, in slugfests, in New York, in Boston, for richer, for even richer...why not save the good times for the end just once?

Ignore the fifth inning and the Red Sox would have been sitting pretty on Friday night during their homestand opener against Texas. Ignore the fifth inning and Brad Penny might still be undefeated at Fenway Park. Ignore the fifth inning all season and the Red Sox would have a tidy little buffer separating themselves from the Yankees in the standings.

If you were in pain watching the Sox yesterday, you weren't alone. Besides the existential pain of watching the Sox scratch out only four hits in their 5-3 loss in Toronto, there was the more immediate pain of watching Dustin Pedroia take a Brian Tallet fastball off the knee (he stayed in the game) and watching Rocco Baldelli slide knees-first at full speed into the outfield wall (he didn't). Baldelli's exit was particularly painful, since his two-run homer in the second accounted for most of the team's offense.

The Celtics throttled the Oklahoma City Thunder (we had to look them up, too) last night, 103-84, but not before Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant split Glen Davis's head open during a third quarter scrum for a rebound. Big Baby, whose head needed 10 stitches, ended the game with his second consecutive double-double (19 points, 10 rebounds). It's an auspicious streak for a man who is starting in place of Kevin Garnett.

"I do think we're turning in the right direction," said Doc Rivers after the game last night. Whether it's that the Celtics actually have shaken off the early-January stinkiness, or whether it was just the appearance of the godawful New Jersey Nets, the Celtics enjoyed their biggest blowout in a long time, cruising to a 118-86 win and bringing Gino out of mothballs for the first time in forever.

We wish we could give you better news. We wish that the Jets had done their job, shocked Miami, and that the Patriots' season didn't come to a sudden thudding end as they flew home from Buffalo last night. For that matter, we wish the Jets' win had saved the career of Eric Mangini (nope) and the overmatched coach, the fossilized QB, and the road apple of a franchise could stick it out together for one more year.