Results tagged “davidortiz”

Well, the Red Sox are officially on a roll. They're preparing for the playoffs by being swept twice in a row. And they did it with style last night, serving up another round of meatball sandwiches to give their guests from Toronto an 11-0 win.

We're officially done agonizing over Monday's collapse and Tuesday's shutdown. The Sox handled the Royals exactly the way a playoff-bound squad should handle a team of no-hopers, riding the cold-weakened arm of Clay Buchholz and the efficient offense to a 10-3 series finale in K.C.

It took a while, but after two straight losses, the Red Sox finally figured out how to beat those plucky KC Royals, and got themselves a much-needed 9-2 win last night.

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.

He spent the first two months of the season making us think of the end of Old Yeller. He spent some time in the last month under a cloud of suspicion and betrayal. But last night, he was the Big Papi that New England loves and remembers, as David Ortiz hit two home runs, including a walk-off, as the Red Sox made it six straight wins against teams that aren't from New York.

Remy's back! Almost! The beloved Sox announcer and NESN made it official that he'll be back in the booth Friday night at Fenway when the Sox play the Yankees. He did a pop-in at Fenway last week after spending most of the season recovering from cancer surgery and subsequent depression, got shown all kinds of love by the fans, and now is ready to come back. Probably on a limited basis at first, so no need for Dennis Eckersley to go away just yet - it's the best of all worlds.

Red Sox fans, though spending the entire month of August being tossed around in the Dryer of Emotion, could at least pretty much count on a win when Josh Beckett pitches. Even, apparently, when Josh Beckett pitches lousy.

Victor Martinez sparks dramatic Sox comeback For five innings in Texas last night, the Boston Red Sox looked the way they've looked a lot lately. Jon Lester was good, though not great, as he allowed three runs in six innings. The offense checked out and extended their latest consecutive scoreless innings streak to 17 before David Ortiz blasted a two-run home run to tie the game at 2-2 in the sixth. Texas carried a 4-2 lead into the ninth inning and then crazy baseball goodness ensued and the Sox won a game they were barely aware of for 3.5 hours by unloading on Frank Francisco's inner John Smoltz for six runs on seven hits, five of which came with two outs.

Bostonist is always willing to help the Boston Red Sox. We hope Theo and the rich owner types appreciate our suggestions.

Our friends at Gothamist are sounding like, well, Red Sox fans used to sound. The team is playing well. But, ... Been there. Surprisingly, Bostonist is not entirely pessimistic today. Yes, the Red Sox appear to be flatlining after five straight losses to their closest rivals, including back-to-back shutouts at the hands of the Yankees and their top two starters. No runs in 24 straight innings is a statistic one can't ignore. Oh, there's the matter of Kevin Youkilis being miscast as an outfielder.

Six hours of baseball; 15 innings; a zero 29 straight times; 496 pitches; 96 at-bats; 11 hits We all knew this week's four-game series would have implications beyond August 6-9. The main implication is that the hapless 0-8 Yankees are gone. Now we have the Yankees who beat the Red Sox twice in two days in two totally different ways and have taken a 4.5 game lead in the division. New York outhit the Sox on Thursday and slightly outpitched them on Friday.

So much for 8-0. So much for John Smoltz going to the mound with any shred of confidence. So much for sweeping their way back into first place. This morning, frankly, the Red Sox are lucky to be alive.

On a day when an actual game was overshadowed by front office moves and clubhouse goodbyes, the Red Sox managed to win anyway. Justin Masterson, Adam LaRoche and two minor-league arms left the Nation in order to bring back Casey Kotchman and Victor Martinez as Theo Epstein was active again at the trading deadline. Martinez is in Boston possibly because of one word: versatility. Theo says he can hit, catch and play first base. Kotchman is supposedly a defensive upgrade over LaRoche. Theo may have created a few headaches for Terry Francona, though.

Is it?

It's exactly what we didn't want to hear: The New York Times says that two of the names on that mysterious 2003 list of baseball players who tested positive for PEDs were our big sluggers, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. We know, of course, that Manny just served a 50-game suspension in L.A. for being caught with something; we'd never heard anything about Ortiz other than blanket suspicion and whispers. This isn't good, though.

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.

We're gonna go ahead and declare this the Summer of Wake. Sure, we noted yesterday that Josh Beckett's the anchor of the rotation. And we're not going to forget to spread the love around when guys deserve it. But in his first start since learning his All-Star status, Tim Wakefield hung around long enough to get graced by a Sox comeback, earn his 11th win, and be carried off the field on a metaphorical wave of cheers.

Don't even think about last night's chokefestloss in Baltimore again. It was so June. There's another game today that, hopefully, will feature Beckett being Beckett - 7-1, 1.94 ERA last 10 starts. And, the bullpen can get a second straight day off.

Some days you win, some days you lose, some days you can't buy a hit off a guy suffering from the flu. Tommy Hanson, who started for the Braves and shut down the Red Sox 2-1, told his roommate/carpool friend Kris Medlen to be ready to start, because he wasn't sure he'd be able to make it. The Braves waited for Hanson between inning with wet towels and plenty of fluids. Then he went back out and humbled the Sox again. "If he was sick," said a grim Terry Francona, "I really don't want to see him when he's not sick."

When Josh Beckett stomped off the mound after the fourth inning, he sure looked mad about something. Perhaps Beckett was realizing that he is done pitching against Atlanta for the balance of the 2009 season. Beckett (9-3) stopped the Braves cold, again, this time with seven shutout innings, six hits and six strikeouts as the Red Sox beat the Braves, 8-2. Beckett pitched 16 scoreless innings against Atlanta this year. Hideki Okajima and Jonathan Paplebon closed the game out. Both were adequate, at best, as Paplebon served up a home run to someone named David Ross, who exists and played eight games for Boston in 2008.

Five of the six RBIs for the Red Sox came from David Ortiz and Jason Varitek? Is it 2003 already?!?

Nick Green, who began the year as the Sox' third-string shortstop, may not stand out like flashy sparkles in the water or stars in the sky. But with Jed Lowrie out for who-knows-how-long, and Julio Lugo having been told that the Red Sox home park has been moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming (good move by the front office, by the way), the SS job may be Green's for the forseeable future. Keep having days like yesterday, Nick, and we'll all know why.

A bad day fishing is better than a good day almost anywhere else, they say. And when you play the Marlins, you're required to make fish jokes. So there you have it. The Sox returned to Fenway for their own Admiral's Feast last night, as David Ortiz homered (#5) and Tim Wakefield went to 9-3 for the year, grilling the fish 8-2.

Six games does not a season make. Even though some easily-swayed souls seem to think so. But regardless, the Red Sox are indisputably 6-0 against the Yankees so far in this young season, everyone's happy, and last night's game was about as good as it gets.

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.

Caution! You are about to enter a no-hit zone! (Okay, there aren't literally zero hits. But, there are very few hits.) The sports team at Boston.com needs an O'Reilly-esque warning before allowing Red Sox fans to look at the David Ortiz Watch. Yes, you can relive each day of Big Papi's never ending struggle at the plate with this painful graph. Great. Thanks. We know there was a big hit for Papi last night, which means there were no dry eyes at Bostonist. This Bostonist couldn't resist that opportunity. Here's something for Sox fans.

A lot of Dates With Destiny from the Red Sox lately. A lot of good signs about the pitching. REALLY good signs. Tim Wakefield flirted with a no-hitter early in the season, Josh Beckett got a phone number in Detroit last week, and last night it was Jon Lester who was just an appletini away from a no-hitter. It wasn't meant to be, but his brilliant pitching and some powerful offense led the Sox to an 8-1 crushing of the Rangers at Fenway.

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.

The Sox have it again. Somehow, they've got it. They finished up a road trip that looked dismal a week ago 6-4, thanks to completing a sweep of the Tigers yesterday in Comerica Park. Tim Wakefield fell behind 3-0 in the second? No problem!

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.