Sunday Sampler
Its been a while since I posted, sorry about that, sometimes life gets busy in our household.
The Redsox are in the Bronx this weekend. They won game one Friday which featured timely hitting, poor pitching and an 11-4 end result. Mariano Rivera looked normal and he saw his ERA climb over 12 for the young season.
Saturday's game was completely different as Karstens was the starter for the Yankees. The first two batters singled and Karstens left with an injury. Things looked good for the Sox but Kei Igawa came in and threw 6 shutout innings and even Mariano Rivera closed the game out to get his first save, 3-1 Yankees.
Today's game has Wang vs. Tavarez, advantage Yankees.
Overall the Sox have hit well enough to be tied with the Braves for the best record in baseball. The pitching has carried them so far but numerous concerns still remain on the hitting side.
Time for the Cocoa Crisp report. Crisp has elevated his season average up to .231 but missed 5 games last week. He had some huge hits against the Yankees in Boston last week before sitting out. While .231 isn't anywhere near where he needs to get to, it is improvement and the jury is still out but feeling a little better.
Varitek and Lugo have both climbed up around the .250 mark and are showing signs of climbing further.
Ortiz has been on track and Lowell has been the same early season performer we saw last year, hitting .321 with 4 HR to this point. Keep an eye on him, he went way downhill in the second half last year.
JD Drew has been a little slow out of the gate, hitting .278 but he is a hitter and will elevate that average.
Manny is the biggest surprise at this point in the season. His average remains low at .188 with only 2 HR. He needs to heat up and start contributing.
The pitching has been great, team ERA is 3.25 and Beckett has gone 5-0 with a 2.48 ERA.
Barry Bonds is at 742 now, 14 away from cheating his way to the record books. boooooooo.
The NFL draft was yesterday, I admit to having it on tv or the radio for most of the first round. Was fun watching the train reck that was Brady Quinn. Felt sorry for him as they kept focusing on him after Miami passed on him at #9. He ended up in a good spot with Cleveland and will have a good chance to succeed there.
The Falcons addressed many needs in the first few rounds taking Jamaal Anderson (DE) in the first, Justin Blalock(OG) and Chris Houston (CB) in the 2nd and finishing with Laurent Robinson (WR) in the 3rd. It was a smart draft for them, not giving in to the temptation of trading up to get local star Calvin Johnson from Georgia Tech.
The Patriots took Brandon Merriweather (S) from Miami with the 24th overall pick and then trade the 28th overall pick to the 49ers for a late pick this year and the 49ers first round pick next year. The Patriots also traded the 91st overall pick to Oakland for a later pick this year and a 3rd round pick next year.
Rumors on espn.com have Randy Moss being traded later to New England! Not sure what to make of that, it goes against the philosophy of the team a little bit but if anybody can straighten Moss out and get the most out of him I would say they have the best shot.
The NBA playoffs are underway, I haven't yet engaged in it and won't for another round or so...just enough time to hope Kobe gets knocked out and hopefully Shaq too. Lets go Suns!
On the local front, the little league team my son plays for has two regular season games left and sit atop the standings. Yesterday they lost in the last inning to an inferior team. It is the second time a cellar dweller has beaten them this season and combined with how they have completely dominated good teams in the league it leaves open the question of how they will do in the playoffs. They likely will be paired up against a much weaker team... Jack (my son) continues to learn and have fun. Yesterday he hit a line drive to left for a double. It has been a while since he has connected that way so hopefully all the tutoring and coaching has worn off and he is going back to hitting the way he can...lol...the amount of players on his team that have gone backwards in performance at the plate is significant. The question I play around with in my mind is - is all the coaching and changing of batting stances etc. all good to do with an 8 year old? Are you teaching good habits that they will keep or just messing up a young player and they are not yet at the point that the habits will be long term? There are a couple of good hitters (with bad form) that the coaching staff (myself included) have been trying to "fix" all season. We killed confidence all over the place, but yesterday the bottom half of the lineup generated most of the offense so maybe they got over a hump.
The weather here in Atlanta has turned finally, we are now getting temps north of 80 daily and today I am taking a couple of the kids out on the boat for the first time this season. Cya next time.
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