The Sox don't die easily, but they died nevertheless, in a day game following Friday's near nightmare at the Rogers Centre. The pitching matchup didn't favor the Sox with Roy Halliday facing David Wells. Wells (0-2) puked up a quantity start including back-to-back-to-back jacks by Corey Koskie, Vernon Wells, and Shea Hilenbrand. As Gary Peters used to say, Wells had the worst kind of wildness, "wild in the strike zone".
Trailing 5-1, the Sox pulled within one in the sixth on a titanic David Ortiz three-run homer to dead center field, and got even in the seventh when an Eric Hinske throw pulled shortstop John McDonald off the bag. While trying to complete a 3-6-3 twin-killing, McDonald had to reach to the right field side and this time, the umpire didn't call the 'neighborhood play' a routine out.
Wells started the seventh, yielding a leadoff double, and Matt Mantei couldn't put out the fire as the Jays took the lead for good 6-5. Mantei, John Halama, and Blaine Neal made their case for innings surrendering 6 runs in the Toronto eighth, including a grand slam by Gregg Zaun, who now has 40 career homers.
You never see that. The three consecutive homers by the Jays.
If Brad Mills were to be asked about the Sox execution today, he'd have to paraphrase John McKay's line, "I'm in favor of it."
Quote of the day, from Trader magazine (Alan Schwarz)- "If you want to sign a free-agent starting pitcher who will yield as few runs as possible, the most illuminating statistic is, strangely enough, not earned run average. Believe it or not, according to exhaustive regression analysis done by the Red Sox (and many others), a pitcher's rates of strikeouts and walks have a much higher correlation to future ERA - even more than ERA itself."
Did you know? John Brittain summarizes Curt Schilling's place in MLB pitching history at The Hardball Times. http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/under-the-radar/
Statistics are for losers. After four games, the Sox were tied for 5th in the AL with 18 runs and were 11th in ERA and 13th in WHIP ratio at 1.50.
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