Results tagged “davidortiz”

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.

With a day off comes the chance to reflect, which is what the Red Sox press was doing in full force on Monday. The Globe's Adam Kilgore succinctly sums up the first third of the Red Sox season in today's edition: "The uneven pattern of the season's first third - one unexpected difficulty replaced by the next - made for a mostly pleasant ultimate result."

"I gave up five runs,,,what else is there to say about it?" Not the words of a confident pitcher. Sure, you can look at the glass as being half-full, and say that other than leaving a pitch hanging over the plate for Justin Morneau to smack a three-run homer, Jon Lester wasn't all that bad. But we don't deal in half-full here in Boston, so we're equally concerned about the two other guys Jon Lester put on base, and the two other runs he gave up in last night's 5-2 loss in Minnesota.

We're old school Sox fans here at Bostonist, which means that we haven't been able to shake the "what are they going to do to break your heart this time" mentality that was drilled into us at an early age. But we've heard so much about this new Red Sox fan philosophy - the "of course they're going to get it done, when have they ever not?" outlook - that we're going to use Monday's Red Sox-Twins showdown as a reason to try it out.

It had been almost three weeks since the Red Sox cracked double digits. More importantly, it had been almost three days since the Sox won a game. Luckily, both those streaks ended.

Whew. All the crisis counselors can go back now. All the newspapers ready to print articles like "How To Talk To Your Kids About David Ortiz" can run something else instead. Rosary bead sales will be down today. Big Papi's finally put one out.

"Two mysterious things happened in the universe today," said Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki after last night's game. Well, more than that, but who's counting?

Sometimes, you just have to tip your hat. And that's what we're tipping this morning, to Carolina goalie Cam Ward, after he survived 36 furious Bruins shots to shut out our home team and tie their series 1-1. It's too early in the series to tip anything else, but local packies are on notice.

Can Bostonians ever get enough news about competitive athletics? In a word, no. Bostonist told you all about the Saturday hapsfrom the TDBNG, Tampa and the track. Yes, there is more to tell.

Rust? Nah. Nine days after they dispatched Montreal, the Bruins only needed a little time to find their winning pace, and took Game One from the Hurricanes, 4-1. And by a little time, we mean 94 seconds, which is how long it took for David Krejci to tip in an Aaron Ward shot to go up 1-0.

David Ortiz, take a load off. Relax. Red Sox Nation needn't always turn its hopeful eyes to you anymore. There is a new Mr. Clutch in town - his name is Jason Bay.

The Red Sox and the Yankees are constitutionally forbidden from playing a game in less than four hours. That's the only explanation, right? Luckily for us, the Sox only really started getting their act together as the clock crept towards midnight, as a pair of clutch home runs gave them a 5-4 win and a 1-0 advantage in the 133 games these two old foes are slated to play against each other this year.

The Bruins are back! For the moment!

Both the Celtics and the Bruins took the day off Monday, which allowed Boston sports fans to focus their attention on the palm trees and pitchers assembled roughly 1,472 miles from home. While it might still be chilly in New England, Red Sox Spring Training helps to remind us that baseball really will be returning to Boston in a matter of weeks.

The Hawks are real. We knew they took the Celtics to seven inexplicable games last year, and we knew they were undefeated when they arrived at the Garden last night.

If watching the Tampa Bay Rays score 29 runs to the Red Sox' 5 over the course of two games and six and half innings weren't discouraging enough to watch on television this postseason, imagine the fans at Fenway Park.

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"?

Is history going to repeat itself? Can the button-down boys of '08 remember what happened last year, and four years ago? Is Kevin Millar available for an inspirational speech/booze luge?