Results tagged “jonlester”

"Whatever the hex is, I guess somebody un-hexed it," said the Angels' Chone Figgins. We're not sure what that hex may be, or if it's really gone, but last night, the Angels looked like hex-free division winners. And the Red Sox looked like a team that staggered into the playoffs, mustering no offense and succumbing meekly to Anaheimorwhatever 5-0.

The "he" in question is Alex Ovechkin, the two-time NHL MVP and star of the Washington Capitals. The "you" in question is Tim Thomas, Dennis Wideman (the quotee), and the entire Bruins organization, which saw Ovechkin score two goals and an assist to spoil Opening Day for the B's, 4-1.

Mother Nature was as sick of it as you were. Josh Beckett was a very late scratch with back spasms, so the Sox sent young Michael Bowden to the mound with about 15 minutes' notice to try to stop the Blue Jays. Five innings later, Bowden and reliever Hunter Jones had both been sent to the showers with ERAs over 10. Two innings after that, the skies opened up and put the Sox and the Fenway crowd out of their misery. Final score: 11-5, Toronto, in seven innings.

Oh, and the Red Sox lost the game, 9-5. Lester wasn't having a very good even before the ball hit his knee. He threw 78 pitches in 2.1 innings and allowed eight hits and five runs. David Ortiz had three RBI. A-Rod was 3-3 with four RBI and three stolen bases. The Yankees stole 97 bases. We know the box score says seven, but it felt like more.

Say what you will about Curt Schilling, you usuallly know exactly where he stands on every issue on which he chooses to opine. Quite often it feels like he addresses every single issue. Schilling appeared on Joe Buck Live on HBO on Tuesday and held nothing back except for some choice language Buck only hears from Artie Lange.

Two weeks ago, if you had told us that two weeks from now(then), the Sox would be closer to catching the Yankees than they were to falling behind Texas, we'd have put you on the disabled list with flu-like symptoms. Not that we (seriously) think they're going to catch the Yankees, but it can't be denied that the Sox have been playing their best ball of the season lately, and the roll continued with an 11-5 throttling of the O's last night in Baltimore.

After 2008, it seems odd to say that a September double-header against the Rays seemed anti-climatic, but there you go. We said it. The Red Sox took two games from the fading Tampa Bay team in a fashion that could only be described as "inevitable." The wins brought the Sox' record against AL East teams to 42-21, the best in baseball against a team's home division.

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.

With the Sox traveling down to Florida, Tedy Bruschi was given a place squarely in the spotlight on Monday.

Is Jon Lester personally responsible for more wins this season than any other Red Sox? If Sarah Green, of the baseball blog UmpBump, is to be believed, yes, he is. She has compiled a pie chart showing the Wins Above Replacement, or WAR, of every Red Sox player with a positive rating. WAR is a new-fangled statistic that takes into account batting, baserunning, tendency to hit into double plays, and various aspects of defense to determine how many runs, and, consequently, wins, each player can take credit for. (It's briefly described here.)

The bats are alive, they've figured out how to win on the road, and the Red Sox are heading into the Yankee series this weekend playing a completely different brand of ball than they did over the previous two weeks. Oh, Dryer of Emotion, you've tumbled us out of the lint trap.

Bostonist has obtained a picture of the 2009 Red Sox just before they embarked on their make-or-break week playing their top AL East rivals. If it looks like Sonny Corleone seconds before he was perforated by Barzini's men, it's not a coincidence.

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.

The Red Sox have left Baltimore, but it's not out of the question that the bus took off while some Sox player was still rounding the bases. For a team in a on-the-field funk and off-the-field turmoil, a trip to Baltimore was just what the doctor ordered. And at the moment, nobody is questioning the offense, after an 18-10 slugfest finished off the weekend sweep.

Pitchers' Duel: A dramatic event with little scoring and no margin for error. Jon Lester and Brian Bannister demonstrated what the term meant last night as each man carried a shutout into the eighth inning in a 1-0 Red Sox win over Kansas City.

Pitchers' Duel: A dramatic event with little scoring and no margin for error. Jon Lester and Brian Bannister demonstrated what the term meant last night as each man carried a shutout into the eighth inning in a 1-0 Red Sox win over Kansas City.

Sure, if you win the Stanley Cup, you get your name engraved on it, you get to take it home for a day to do whatever you want with it, and kids from Yellowknife to Halifax go to bed dreaming of it. But still, when your year is over, you usually have to give it back. Usually to the Red Wings.

It's June. June 13. The game last night was the 61st game of 2009. But, it really could have been played in October. The last two World Series champions battled in a game the Red Sox won 5-2 in 13 innings in a game that was filled with great pitching, timely hitting and error-free defense. Bostonist is making no predictions but Boston and Philadelphia, well, hey, you saw the game. Admit it. You thought it, too. The Herald did it, too.

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.

Terry Francona tinkered with the lineup. Jon Lester trusted once again in his pitch mix. And the results were more than satisfactory, as the Red Sox avoided a sweep with a 8-2 win in Toronto.

"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.

"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?

Should we be concerned? If the question relates to the Red Sox' starting pitching, it's hard to see why not. Jon Lester got the ball at Fenway yesterday afternoon, promptly fell into a 2-0 hole on an Evan Longoria homer, then got pulled in the middle of a dreadful fifth inning, as the Rays started banging hits into every corner of Fenway. When the dust settled, it was a 14-5 Tampa Bay blowout.

Well, that was a letdown.

We don't want to put any excessive pressure on the Bruins or anything, but today could be a pretty important day for the Black and Gold. If they win today during their showdown against the Rangers, they clinch the Eastern Conference title. Not only does it provide bragging rights and a healthy dose of confidence for the playoffs ("Playoffs? Don't talk to me about PLAYOFFS!"), they'd get home ice throughout Eastern Conference postseason play. We suppose you could say that it's kind of a big (epic, massive) deal, but we hope that the team takes on the challenge by lacing up the skates the same way they do every game and skating to victory the same way they've done 50 times this season.

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.

So much for that. After the rousing Game Five comeback and the solid Game Six win, you can understand why we thought the experience and the mental toughness of the Sox would win out over the youth and the big dreams of the Rays. And, if the Sox had brought their bats to Tropicana Field last night, the story may well have ended the way we wanted it to.

If last night left Red Sox fans feeling punchdrunk, this morning we're nursing the hangover. Last night's game would, if possible, be best left unspoken of, unremembered and, if we could figure out how to work that time machine we've been working on, unplayed.

Well...forget 18-1. The Patriots were chewed up, spit out, massacred and other violent verbs last night in San Diego, as the Chargers finally figured out how to beat the Pats (play them in October, without Tom Brady) and romped to a 30-10 win that really didn't even seem that close.

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.