Long Weekend Roundup

With a ton of games this weekend I must admit to being a bit of a poor sports fan this weekend. My girlfriend was here and I spent more time looking at ancient artifacts at the Museum of Natural History Saturday than I did watching Florida/LSU or Alabama/Ole Miss...fortunately for me neither game really lived up to the hype. Huge weekend in college football this Saturday including Texas/Oklahoma and I plan on touching on that a bit later in the week.

As for the NFL yesterday: The Broncos beat New England and have officially entered way overrated territory. Look, they beat a struggling, overrated team, by three points at home in a game they probably should have lost. Champ Bailey did an excellent job on Randy Moss but they are going to have a hell of a time defending the multitude of weapons that San Diego will be giving them in Cali this week (I think that is the Monday night game).

The Giants are good, the Eagles are good. The Raiders are bad, the Bucs are really bad.

I thought Seattle would beat Jacksonville this weekend but is there a stranger team than the Jags in all of sports? One week they'll look like the '07 Pats and the next they'll look like the current Raiders.

Talk of Dallas being terrible I think is a little overrated at this point. Yes the Chiefs are terrible. No, they don't usually get blown out in back-to-back weeks at Arrowhead. Dallas has some problems, but how about Miles Austin. Credit at least one Pewch Revolution reader who picked up Miles Austin Sunday morning and inserted him into his lineup en route to mashing his opponent in my league (thumbs down on dropping Hester to do it though).

Indy, New Orleans, Giants, Philly. Those are the best 4 teams in football. Luckily two of them square off this weekend (New Orleans and NYG).

The Jets defense looked painfully average against a once again surging Dolphins team. But, on the bright side for the Jets, Braylon Edwards is away from Lebron James and once again ready to play football.

Other than that yet another pretty bland weekend in football.

What I really wanted to get to...the MLB playoffs..

Sweep, Sweep, Sweep, 4 games? With a bunch of intriguing Divisional Series matchups who could have guessed that they would already be complete, with only one losing team managing to muster a win and none of them going 5 games. Most people's favorite to win the NL - the Cardinals - were swept away by a familiar face in the form of Joe Torre. I don't think too many people are surprised by the Angels beating the Red Sox, but a sweep is quite surprising. And that is the series I want to focus on:

I guess I should first mention it will be Yanks/Angels and Phils/Dodgers...I believe it doesn't start until Friday or Saturday, either way expect a big preview for each.

Back to the Sox/Angels series...

Back to last Thursday...Lackey/Lester at LAA. Torii Hunter homers and as I already mentioned, in a terribly umped game that certainly made the score worse than it should have been, Angels win and probably would have anyway...I mentioned how bad the umpiring was and it really has continued to be miserable throughout the playoffs. My thoughts coming out of this game: if it's Lester/Lackey again I will be betting a lot on the Sox. Angels 1-0.

Game 2: This is the game I believed the series would come down to. If the Angels win, they ensure a worst-case-scenerio of game 5 at home, with a chance to win the series in Boston if they could take just one game. Weaver-Beckett certainly made this a good pitching matchup, but one that you would have to give the edge to Boston in. It is my contention that Terry Francona absolutely lost the Red Sox this game and in turn the series here...

First of all, we must say that the umps again missed a number of easy calls on the bases, again the Sox came out on the short side of the stick. That however, is not why they lost this game. A bit of decent managing probably would have resulted in a 1-1 extra inning game that could have gone either way.

It all began in the 4th inning as Beckett gave up a run but still looked strong. In the 5th he had a 1-2-3 inning against the 7-8-9 hitters, he was about to face the order the 3rd time through. Then he came out with a Beckett-esque 6th inning going 1-2-3 against Figgins (k), Abreu (ground out) and Hunter (fly out). The problem was that the balls the Angels were putting in play were hit squarely and even Figgins I believe smashed a line drive or two foul before striking out. We then enter the 7th inning and Beckett issues a 4-pitch walk to Vlad to lead off the inning. His pitches varied from 6 inches outside the zone to a foot-plus. Something didn't look right. Kendrick comes in to run for Vlad and Beckett quickly falls behind Kendry Morales with a couple more pitches that aren't even close to the zone. He battles and eventually gets Morales to fly out to deep left-center. Crafty and gutsy. Kendrick then steals second on a very poor Beckett-Martinez combo in terms of holding runners. As Beckett again falls quickly behind Juan Rivera Billy Wagner is now up, throwing and completely warm in the bullpen. Rivera absolutely clocks a Beckett fastball left right over the heart of the plate and the Red Sox are fortunate as it is right at third baseman Mike Lowell who makes the play. 2 outs, good baserunner on second and switch-hitting Macier Izturis stepping to the plate. To be fair, Izturis has been better hitting from the right side this year, but on his career he is actually a better left-handed hitter. He came into the game 3-3 with a double off Beckett on the season. In fact, he has hit Beckett well his entire career. Meanwhile, Beckett has lost command of the strike zone and his fastball has tallied off to low 90's..but he hadn't yet hit 100 pitches and I think that is what Francona hung his hat on. So instead of turning Izturis around and bringing in the left-handed Wagner to all but ensure getting out of the inning 1-1 (and with plenty of power arms available to get through the next few innings) Francona turned the Sox biggest strength (bullpen) into an unused commodity and Izturis singled in the winning run on a fat hanging curveball from Beckett.

I promise that this is not complete Monday Morning Quarterbacking on my part. Sure I didn't know all of those stats, but Francona certainly did. And I was sitting there urging for Francona to bring in Wagner (I had bet the Sox and also figure the Yanks would benefit from these two teams playing a tight series)...yet he didn't.

Perhaps worst of all instead of Francona then going out and making sure his team was just a run down, he left Beckett in to face Mike Napoli. Izturis took second base and then Beckett plunked Napoli. Then, he finally took him out, right? Oh no, he left him in to face Ayber who tripled in two more runs. Finally, Francona went to Wagner and with the Sox now down 4-1 headed to the 8th inning, Wagner averted further damage throwing 98 MPH fastballs and struck out Chone Figgins on 3 or 4 pitches.

Perhaps best of all (since I already used worst of all) is the fact that Wagner gives off a leadoff single the next inning and then Francona goes to Papelbon! So, he's willing to use his power arms to keep them in a 4-1 game with just 3 outs for his own team left, but not in a 1-1 (or even 2-1) game with 6 outs remaining for his hitters? What kind of sense does this make? He was willing to use Papelbon for two innings if necessary yet waited all that time to bring in Wagner?

I discussed the decision with a Pewch reader and respected Red Sox fan who didn't seem to agree with me. He thought it was debatable at best. Personally, I thought it was every bit as bad as Grady Little leaving Pedro out there....sure it won't be as scrutinized or met with the legendary blunder that Little's move was, but it may have cost the Sox the series...too often managers only look at the pitch-count and don't best utilize their pitchers...in the regular season, ok, but this is the playoffs, you have to do whatever it takes to win every game.

Game 3 is history itself as Papelbon and the bullpen blew a late lead..so maybe Francona just knew his pen wasn't as good as advertised all along? More likely, a lot of the wind was already out of the Red Sox sails at this point.