Results tagged “kevinyoukilis”

"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 Twins beat the Tigers, so the field of eight is set in the baseball playoffs. All we can do now is wait. And wait and wait and wait. The Red Sox won't play until tomorrow night, when all the other first-round playoff series start today.

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.

Somehow, in the quagmire and the deluge that took turns drenching the city yesterday, the Red Sox and the Rays found time to get in five innings. But one was really all the Sox needed.

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.)

Tazawa's arm, Youk's bat keys to victory The day after a historically bad pitching performance overwhelmed a more-than-adequate offense, the Red Sox pitching and hitting came together for a rout of their own as they dominated the Yankees, 14-1, in an important win for the team.

Harvard Law professor and torture enthusiast Alan Dershowitz ran nearly 700 words in today's Globe about the injustice of the beanball. Using the most recent beaning of ball magnet Kevin Youkilis as a case study, Dershowitz points out the obvious: a team that beans a great hitter—and enrages him to the point where he draws a five game suspension—actually benefits from the infraction. In the case of the Youkilis beaning, Youk sat out for five games, during which the Sox went 1-4, and the offending Tigers' pitcher, Rick Porcello, merely had his next scheduled start pushed back a game.

Wow, that dismal weekend in New York seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? Back at home and spurred on by Kevin Youkilis' charge on Tuesday (OK, that wasn't a total success, but what's done is done), the Sox continued pounding the Tigers, 8-2. Most of those runs were admittedly superfluous, as Josh Beckett had another Josh Beckett game, allowing only three hits (well, two of them were solo HRs) over seven innings to pick up his league-high 14th win.

Well, Junichi Tazawa got his first major league win in his first major league start. All he had to do was touch off a series of events that landed somewhere between "difference of opinion" and "international incident", hang on for the minimum five innings, and wait for Mike Lowell to swoop in and save the day.

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.

Clay Buchholz told NESN that he's in a game where confidence is key. He's got it now and has to keep it to be successful in the MLB. Buchholz solidified his self-confidence and the organization's confidence in him on Friday by pitching 5.2 innings and giving up just one run on four hits as the Red Sox beat the Blue Jays, 4-1. And now, he goes back to Pawtucket. So watch out all you AAA punks.

Baseball can be an exciting, intense and creative enterprise. You wouldn't notice that after Saturday's run-filled spectacle that featured 10 pitchers, 14 walks, four errors, 24 runs and one torrential downpour en route to a 15-9 Red Sox win. Boston's powerful offense was on display, too. The Sox scored runs in the first four innings, including three, each, in the first two innings to build a 9-0 lead. Boston had three runs in four different innings.

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.

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.

So said Jonathan Papelbon afterwards. And if you're one of the millions who figured that (hour-long rain delay) + (10-1 lead) = (bedtime), we understand. Unfortunately, among the snoozing millions were the Sox bullpen, who turned a 10-1 lead into a devastating 11-10 loss in no time. This was ugly.

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!

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.

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.

"It's just a sad situation," said Tim Wakefield afterwards. He was talking, of course, about the pregame ceremonies in Anaheim last night to honor the late Nick Adenhart - the moment of silence, the emotional moment when Torii Hunter and John Lackey brought his jersey out to the mound, the looks of shock and despair still on the Angels' faces - and was not, we repeat NOT, referring to the Red Sox' sudden 3-game losing streak.

It's never a good idea when a hockey team turns introspective and scared. But that's what happed to the Bruins last night, as they lost a 2-goal lead, a game (in OT, and we'll take every point we can at this point) and almost any shred of confidence they have left after their nightmarish last few weeks.

Garnett (Still.) Powe. Ray Allen. Out. (And that's not even counting Scalabrine and Tony Allen, who we've kind of written off.) How would the remnants of the Celtics beat the Heat and their clear silver medalist in the MVP race?

Who can blame Doc Rivers for blowing his top? The Celtics blew a 13-point lead, they're 4-6 in their last ten games, a few more guys got injured, and he finally got thrown out at the end of last night's 127-121 loss in Chicago.

Let's think about baseball for a minute. It's colder than the surface of Neptune out there right now, and it's nice to imagine, however improbably, that three months from now, the grass will be green, the sausages will be cooking...and Kevin Youkilis will be at first base (unless he's at third) and all will be right with the world.

If there was ever any doubt that the Boston Bruins are the Rodney Dangerfield of Boston sports' Big Four (sorry, Revs), today confirms it. The black and gold dragged their exhausted selves onto the ice in Toronto on Monday night to face down the Leafs and continue a schedule that has them playing 10 games in 18 days. They won, 3-2, proving again the Boston hockey can consistently win. Phil Kessel, Matt Hunwick and Michael Ryde notched the goals for the B's.

Bostonist congratulates Red Sox first-baseman and goatee-enthusiast Kevin Youkilis on his marriage to local beauty and PR professional Enza Sambataro. The couple wed yesterday in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico after a year-long engagement. Among the 120 guests were Youk’s teammates Mike Lowell, David Ortiz, and Dustin Pedroia, who was no doubt also celebrating his recent Gold Glove win. We’re sure he didn’t gloat about it to his teammates though. That would be completely out of character for the shy and modest Pedroia. According the the Globe, the bride wore Vera Wang. It is her second marriage and Youkilis’s first. No word on whether doves were released from Youk’s beard.

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"?

New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Cancun for Spring Break. And now, Anaheim in October. These are the place you go to get loose, have fun, and live it up. The Red Sox made it 11 in a row over the Angels in the postseason, crushing the Halos with a dramatic 9th-inning home run by J.D. Drew.

Are we ready to put last season's unpleasantness behind us? Are we ready to internalize that the exact number of wins doesn't matter, so long as it all ends with a three-game winning streak? are we, in the parlance of our times, ready for some football?