Results tagged “daisukematsuzaka”

With the Red Sox in the insignificant final series of 2009, the most interesting topic today for Bostonist is, you guessed it, the notoriously enigmatic Patriots injury report! Jerod Mayo and Vince Wilfork generated a lot of interest as Bill Belichick listed them as "doubtful" and "questionable," respectively.

Clearly, winning the AL East is a low priority for the Red Sox. Considering how heated the Boston/LA rivalry's has become in the last few days, obviously Terry and the boys feel like another Sox/Angels series is the only way to clear up the bad blood.

Paul Byrd comes back from a year on the shelf and throws a gem. Tim Wakefield comes back from the DL and gets a W. And now Daisuke Matsuzaka comes back from three months away and beats the Angels. Clearly, some of these guys need weeks and weeks off between starts. Let's seriously look into the 75-man rotation next year.

Tampa Bay loaded the bases with one out in the first inning. Ah, nevermind. Friday's game was washed away and will be made up as part of a doubleheader on Sunday. Josh Beckett, Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester will start the three games versus Tampa Bay. It remains a mystery to Bostonist why Lester had to take the mound. Defer to the meteorologist umpire because we have nothing on that one. Since the rain nixed Friday's Sox game, all Bostonist has to worry about is the cost of pitching and beer. Both are expensive. According to OverTheMonster.com, Fenway Park has the most expensive beer in the MLB if you factor in the team's winning percentage.

The folks who operate the Fenway Park scoreboard have been missing out on a key opportunity to help out the team. Just keep those two red circles on the scoreboard lit anytime the Sox are up at bat. Before you know it, baseballs will be clanging off the Green Monster like nobody's business.

It started off well. #14 was unveiled in right field, the man of the hour got to speak, and everyone was happy. On Jim Rice Day at Fenway, what could go wrong?

WEEI reports that Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka complained in the Japanese press this week about the Red Sox' training program, citing it as the cause of the shoulder injury that has twice sent him to the disabled list this season.

The Red Sox staff had no answers for the bottom of Seattle's order as Rob Johnson and Ronny Cedeno combined to go 5-10 with five RBI in a 7-6 Sox loss in 11 innings. Johnson's two-run double in the 11th inning was the deciding hit in the game. Ramon Ramirez took the loss.

The city of Boston and the men who fill the ranks of the Boston Fire Department simply can't get along. Contract disputes have long since gone nuclear and now any controversy turns into a five-alarm blaze of rhetoric and posturing perfectly designed for the city's competitive media outlets.

It is always trippy to think about the fact that we are living through history and watching legacies be written before our very eyes. While the 2009 Red Sox and its fans are busy keeping their eyes on the prize and the standings, we are witnessing one of the best bullpens in Red Sox history, seeing what is, on paper, the best pitching rotation in the game and watching future Hall of Famers hone their crafts.

The Red Sox rotation is going through a little upheaval right now. But not Josh Beckett. This guy's job isn't going anywhere.

Daisuke Matsuzaka is a very rich man because he is an elite pitcher. He was, or should be. We think. His 1-5 mark and 8.23 ERA, made worse by an 8-2 loss to the Atlanta Braves on Friday, isn't good enough. What Tony Massarotti termed "The Dice-K Dilemma" is now at hand. Theo and Terry Francona are now faced with baseball's version of the Kobayashi Maru.

Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank like to travel and love that we pay for it.[Boston Herald]

Hopefully, the Red Sox weren't planning on going out dancing after their first two games in Philadelphia. Extra innings on Friday, and an hour-and-a-half rain delay Saturday. At least Pat's is open 24/7 for a late night cheesesteak.

o...what's the deal with Daisuke? What's he really like? What's his favorite color? And why is he so maddeningly consistently inconsistent? After winning his last start, we expected good things out of Dice. Better things, at any rate, than his 5 2/3 innings of Texas Rangers batting practice yesterday.

Milestone Reached: Red Sox manager Terry Francona, who got his 500th Sox victory with last night's 5-1 in Detroit. Tito joins Joe Cronin and Pinky Higgins in the exclusive club of Sox managers who haven't been prematurely (or correctly) run out of town. "That means I've been really lucky with an organization with a lot of players that have been very good," said the skipper.

If you can't be good, be memorable. Isn't that how the old saying goes? Well, it's a saying the Red Sox took to heart last night, tying a modern-day baseball record with six wild pitches - four by Daisuke Matsuzaka in his first game back - en route to a crummy 4-2 loss to the Twins.

Sorry to go all Darth Vader on you there. But we just learned that Doc Rivers thinks Kevin Garnett is probably out for the rest of the year, i.e., playoffs. It's not shocking, but it's super depressing. Here's hoping they find a way to have him on the bench, as an extra defensive assistant coach, if they can put him in the Hannibal Lecter cage or put an electroshock ankle bracelet on him from taking the court in street clothes.

With the summer already seemingly down in flames (more on that later, if we can bear it), there was a bit of welcome news yesterday, as the NFL released its 2009 schedule, so we can now see what the Patriots' fall will look like. We already knew about the Monday Night opener with Buffalo and the trip to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of London in October, but it's here in all its glory.

"Not being able to go so deep is stressful both for myself and the team" - Daisuke Matsuzaka

Here, in the Bostonist confessional, it's OK to be honest. Did you give up last night? Did you see Daisuke get rocked for five early runs, (and Delcarmen for two more) look at the anemic Sox lineup, and think, "I don't need this agony and misery tonight"?

You want to look on the bright side? OK, we'll play along. The Red Sox have a seven game ALCS winning streak when faced with elimination. There, we said it. Now all they have to do is get a sterling effort from Dice-K tonight, credible efforts from their other shellshocked pitchers, and some semblance of a competent offense, and the Sox can maybe run that streak up to ten.

It wasn't one for the history books. But the Bruins, while integrating some new faces and welcoming back some old ones, got the better of Colorado and opened the 08-09 season with a 5-4 win.

On the way to Tropicana Field, Terry Francona announced his starting rotation for the ALCS! And it's...a continuation of the rotation from the first round. That was anticlimactic. Daisuke will start Game One in St. Petersburg, Beckett Game Two, and Lester and Wakefield will take the first two games in Boston. Tito says he has equal confidence in all three of his big guns (even after Beckett's stinkeroo last week), and says the order doesn't matter as long as they all potentially get to start twice. The man knows what he's doing.

There's not enough lipstick in the world to cover up this pig. It's been a long, long time since we've had to report on a Patriots game that was this hard to think about, let alone write about. The Pats welcomed Miami to Foxboro with open arms, a red carpet, and a map to the end zone, and as a result are 38-13 victims.

Roy Halladay wasn't going to let the Red Sox celebrate on his dime. With the magic number at one, the Sox just needed to beat Roy and the Wild Card spot (at least; they're still not giving up on Tampa Bay) would be theirs. But as the Sox learned, you can't spot Halladay a 5-0 lead and expect to come back.

Well, they flipped the switch, and we're still here. Our MVP All-World QB is gone, and we're still here. The Rays are officially going to leave Fenway still in first, and we're still here. And we feel fine.

Folks...the late season magic has arrived.

Daisuke Matsuzaka, whose high pitch counts and low ERA give one the unsettling feeling of watching a chess master who mysteriously sacrifices all of his pawns before winning everything with his bishop and rook, won a tidy 8-0 shutout last night against the White Sox. Dice-K pitched eight innings, during which he struck out eight, walked two, and allowed two hits. The win improved his record to 16-2 and tied him with Hideo Nomo for the most wins by a Japanese native in a single MLB season. "I don't think that just reaching that number in and of itself has that much meaning," Matsuzaka told reporters.

Is this going to be the game that we look back on and say, yes, this was the day the 2008 Red Sox got it together? It's not out of the question. The Sox have been - let's go with scuffling - for a couple of weeks. They've watched Toronto blow them out of Fenway and blow Jon Lester out of SkyDome or whatever it's called now. And they stepped up, taking the Jays to extra innings and winning a wild game that's got the knot in every Sox stomach loosened up a little bit.