Sox Appeal

Greech


The co-author of this site, Danny Mac, recently said to me “Dude, Schills won his last two starts, what the hell are we gonna bitch about now?” Hmmm, that’s a good question, Danny. This certainly can’t be a bad thing; in fact I would say it’s a great thing. With the Sox doing so well lately I’ve had pretty much one thing on my mind for the past week: Red Sox vs. Yankees, Fenway Park.

As it stands now the Red Sox are 8-5 and sitting atop the AL East (yeah, I know it’s only April). They recently swept the Angles, whom many have picked to win it all this year. Their new off season acquisitions are working out great, lead by the wildly overpaid JD Drew who is playing like he doesn’t have any hamstrings, quads, shoulder muscles, tendons, ligaments, or anything else that can be pulled, tweaked, popped or strained. The pitching staff, led by the re-born Josh Beckett, has been throwing great, with a team 2.61 ERA (a 2.11 ERA for the starters not including our “fifth” starter, Freddie Kruger) which is far and away the best in the American League. Jon Papelbon has been mowing people down whenever called upon, like the game last Friday against the Angles when he came into the game in the 8th to strike out Vlad on a 97 mph fastball (I was actually at this game, and although I’m sure I was wicked excited when this was going on, I don’t remember it at all). The one and only bad spot for the Sox has been Wily Mo Pena, who is not living up to huge expectations at the plate(actually, only Danny’s expectations) and is hitting just .200 on the year with only 1 RBI. Things are even worse for Wily Mo in the outfield where he has looked clumsy, out of place, lost, and, at times, more confused than Danny doing long division. The Red Sox are off to a good start, with plenty of room for improvement, but as I said earlier, I am eagerly awaiting this three games series coming up with the Yankees.

For the beginning part of this season the Yankees have been doing what they always do: score runs. Led by none other than “Mr. April”, the Yankees are off to their usual hot start at the plate. A-Rod leads the major leagues with 8 homeruns, 21 RBI and 87 way over the top enthusiastic hand claps, he also has one game winning grand slam that was followed by a home plate celebration that looked gayer than Ari Gold’s gay assistant Lloyd. All this from a guy that was about 7 seconds away from jumping in front of a moving bus, now he’s walking around the Yankee’s dugout with a big creepy grin on his face thinking to himself “They like me! They really like me!!”. I despise A-Rod, I’m just waiting for when he goes through a slump and everyone in New York starts bashing him again leading to him opting out of his remaining contract.

Despite A-Rod and some of the other Yankees luck at the plate at the start of the season, this team is different from the great Yankee teams of the late ‘90s. Only a few of the core guys that were integral to them winning those championships are left. Tino Martinez, Paul O’Neil, Scott Brosius, Steve Swindal, those guys are all gone, and aren’t coming back anytime soon. What’s left is a team with huge holes in their starting pitching and over paid, aging position players.
When the Yankees won four World Series they did so mainly by following their good starting pitching, that is not the way these days. As it stands now Mike Mussina, Carl Pavano, and Chein Ming Wang are all on the DL, which leaves Andy Pettitte, Kei Igawa, Henry Rowengartner, Mel Clark, and The Guy Who Threw The Pizza at The Red Sox Game to round out their starting five. Now I’m not sure about The Guy Who Threw The Pizza at The Red Sox Game, but I am pretty confident that Schilling, Beckett, Dice-K, and Wakefield can out pitch the other four. If any of the reaming healthy pitchers gets a hang nail you know Steinbrenner is going to throw a prorated 40 million at Clemens and try to lure Doc Gooden out of retirement with an 8ball of coke and a warm case of Colt 45s.

The problems with this Yankees team doesn’t just end with their starting pitching. The usually reliable Derek Jeter hasn’t been playing well in the field, he already has 6 errors, almost half way to his 15 last year that was just OK enough it allowed him to steal the Gold Glove from Alex Gonzalez. Jason Giambi’s best hitting days are at least 35 cycles and 5 years behind him, Mariano Rivera is FINALLY looking like a 38 year old closer with about 45,000 miles on his shoulder, people around baseball are actually talking about Bernie Williams playing for the Yankees, and Joe Torre may or may not even be alive and I have a feeling he is about 1-2 years away from wearing Don Zimmerman’s army helmet in the dugout.

All in all I have a good feeling about this series coming up. We have Schilling going on Friday night, a game I will be attending, and hopefully will be remembering, Beckett is going on Saturday and Dice-K is scheduled to pitch the Sunday game. Like I pointed out earlier, we could probably beat any three Yankee starters with the staff from the ’96 American League Blue Jays, but if you can’t get excited about the three guys we have going, then I don’t know what I can do for you. What I will do for you is give you a heads up. Check out this link, before some ass Yankee fan gives it to you. Be warned, it’s not a pretty sight, but if you’re anything like me you’ll spend about 45 minutes watching all the other ones and you’ll try to forget about it as fast as you can.




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