Rotten Grapefruit

Double digit wins for Wells (10), joining Arroyo (10), Clement (11), and Wakefield (13). Somehow, Wells seems like the most 'consistent' of the bunch, probably because he throws strikes.

I continue to worry about mechanical flaws in the delivery of Arroyo and Papelbon contributing to their problems. I certainly hope that the baseball staff is reviewing the tapes/doing self-scouting to try to identify and correct possible problems.

The Sox captured their first series in four, thanks to an offensive outburst and some sharp defense at third (mostly sharp) by Bill Mueller, who has been on something of a hitting tear.

One of the most critical criteria in player evaluation is the willingness to admit you are wrong. As a stock trading afficionado (www.ronsen.blogspot.com) , I recognize that losses/mistakes are inevitable and that "a small loss is a professional loss." Today, GM Theo Epstein attempted to correct that, jettisoning Mike Remlinger in favor of the second coming of Abe Alvarez, who is the poor man's Mark Buehrle, or maybe the middle class' Bruce Chen. Alvarez throws strikes, changes speeds, has a funky delivery, and can't break glass. If he can somehow add a screwball to his repertoire, will we reminisce about Mike Cuellar?

Cuellar was the soft-tossing southpaw who had a remarkable career for the Baltimore Orioles (http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/cuellmi01.shtml) Cuellar won 20 games four times, at least 16 seven times, and had an outstanding career winning percentage of .587. I remember someone saying of Cuellar, "he throws rotten grapefruit up there, and how far can you hit a rotten grapefruit?"

Let's hope that Abe, just a kid at 22, can come up with some rotten fruit of his own to toss up there. I worry about his lack of a fastball, and then I recall guys like Cuellar, Stu Miller, and the latter-day Frank Tanana (52nd in career wins) who got guys out with guile and guts. Oh, yeah, Jamie Moyer is now up to 98th on the career wins list, i.e. in the history of baseball.