Friday Night Lights and the Green Monster

I spent last night watching my son-in-law coach his high school football team to a 31-0 nonconference win. Or I should say I caught glimpses of the game while chasing my grandson around the endzone seating. Words on my tombstone: Grandpa, chase me! So, I didn’t get to see the Sad Sox lose for the 110th time this season, 3-1 in Boston, until I fast-forwarded through TIVO. Yeah, somebody for the Red Sox put a ball over the Green Monster to make the difference. What new? Davis Martin pitched well again. In his last seven starts totaling 35.2 innings, Davis 3.28 ERA and 1.21 WHIP. The twelve walks are a little concerning, but the performance is still noteworthy. So, too, how manager Mickey Sizemore is handling Bryan Ramos, called up to replace an injured Brooks Baldwin—two games glued to the bench. Yeah, that’s what White Sox fans want to see, if Lenyn will ever crack .225. Move over, Amazin’ Mets.

The Green Monster

My three-year old grandson has what I call 1-12 power. Any longtime Start-O-Matic player should know what I mean. Way, way back in the day, players with big power, low batting-average numbers received cards where the homeruns required you to get snake eyes or boxcars with two of three dice thrown; two dice are yellow, the other white. Long story short, it was hard to get 1-12 or 3-2 (and next to impossible roll 1-2, or three ones). Hence, 1-12 power. What this means in practical terms is that most times Leo will dink the ball off the tee or swing at and miss pitches thrown his way. But every once in a while, he rolls that 1-12 with his bat and lines the ball at your head or other places. Wednesday, he hit me in one of the other places. On Labor Day, he put the ball in our neighbor’s yard to the north, this with the tee just a few feet from the fence on the south, so the ball went a good 25 feet on the fly. He’s also cleared a six-foot fence at home. Interesting and encouraging. So, as I was trying to catch my breath after getting hit in that place, I mentioned that, one day, he might put a ball over the Green Monster. My bad, because right now Leo’s world is populated with werewolves and monsters. Luckily, the Sad Sox are visiting Fenway for a weekend series starting tonight. Mom or dad will show him that the only people who should fear this particular monster are lefthanded pitchers. Or anyone on the Sad Sox.

All Bad Things Come to an End

The Sad Sox snapped their twelve-game losing streak last night in Baltimore, topping the Orioles 8-1. Jonathan Cannon picked up the win to put his record at 3-9, which is pretty good by Sox standards. In all fairness to Cannon, he’s stuck on a terrible team, and he does show flashes, not that it matters. This is a team that let Mark Buehrle walk, rather than pay him what he was worth, which in my book was a lot. Buehrle left after the 2011 season, so he never got to team up in the rotation with Chris Sale. Now, that would have been something, Mr. Get-the-ball-and-throw the-ball paired with Mr. Try-and-hit-this-pal. No, Kenny Williams in all his brilliance thought Buehrle and his two no-hitters could be replaced by the likes of Philip Humber and Jake Peavy. Gosh, I wonder why nobody calls Williams to offer him a front-office job. No Buehrle and Sale pairing, no Dylan Cease and Garrett Crochet. Add Cannon to those two, and you’ve got yourself the makings of a staff. Oh, well. Maybe we can make it two in a row with a win in Boston tomorrow. You never know.

Getting Better?

Sad Sox manager Mickey Sizemore wants his team to focus on “getting better,” not avoiding the MLB record for losses in a season. The Keystone Kops may not be focused on futility, but they sure aren’t playing anything resembling major-league baseball. Orioles 9 Sad Sox 0. That’s sixteen shutout losses on the season; one more and over ten percent of the Sox schedule will consist of games where they couldn’t score just one run. Right now, the losing streak is at twelve. So, they could break either the AL record of 21, which they already set this season, or even go for the ML record of 23. You never know. Nick Nastrini started and lost, giving up seven runs—four earned—in 1.2 innings. Nastrini is 0-7 with a 7.79 ERA up here, 3-9 with a 5.24 ERA in Triple-A. By process of elimination, where do you think he belongs? Three unearned runs scored in the second when third baseman Miguel Vargas crashed into left fielder Andrew Benintendi going after a ball Benintendi could’ve caught coming in. Oops, bases loaded. Wait, they’re empty now. Did I mention the six hits, five singles, the Kops punched out? And, hey, Benintendi had a double. Somebody squirt me with the seltzer bottle.

Wretched

To quote Sad Sox manager Mickey Sizemore from the other day, “The record [for losses in a season] is not anything we can focus on. It’s about getting better, playing good baseball and competing.” Ok, then, let’s go with that pathetically low bar. On Sunday, Garrett Crochet pitched until he came to the end of that incredibly short leash GM Hahn-Getz has him on; the front office can’t have anything happen to its most valuable player, at least not until he’s traded. The sad ones lost to the Mets, 2-0 amassing two little singles. Yesterday in Baltimore, Chris Flexen pitched, and for the twentieth straight time, the Sad Sox lost a game Flexen’s started. A 2-0 lead turned into a 13-3 Orioles’ rout. That’s eleven losses in a row and 108 on the season. So, where was the improvement? The eight singles vs. two from the game before? As for the pitching, Flexen and the first three relievers to follow gave up eighteen hits. And Crochet’s the one who’s going to get traded? The bottom four hitters, all acquired since Hahn-Getz took over as GM, went a combined 3-for-13 with a run scored; they also struck out four times. If that means the glass is half-full, I must be half-blind. I still want to know why Bryan Ramos wasn’t called up. And what about Colson Montgomery? That one I know the answer to—the #2 prospect in the organization is batting .206 with140 strikeouts in Triple-A. If Triple-A pitchers can expose Montgomery’s weaknesses, imagine what big-league pitchers would do. This is a circus. No, check that. It’s a clown convention.

Nightmare on 35th Street

Another game, another loss, ten in a row and counting to a record season of a 121-plus. Mets 2 Sad Sox 0. Garrett Crochet stuck out the first seven batters of the game and still lost. The offense consisted of two walks and two singles, minus a runner picked off of first. With every passing game/defeat, we look to have Mickey Sizemore managing the team. Now, it’s also becoming clear that Chris Hahn is the GM. This guy is going to trade Crochet? Would he even want a player in exchange? Consider the Dylan Cease deal. Hahn-Getz got four players in return. Drew Thorpe, the most promising, will have season-ending elbow surgery to address a bone spur. By promising, I mean a 3-3 record and 5.48 ERA. After Thorpe, it’s a mixed bag at best. Steven Wilson is 1-6 with a 5.71 ERA in relief. Jairo Iriarte went 5-7 with a 3.71 ERA starting for Double-A Birmingham. And outfielder Samuel Zavala is hitting .185 with 35 RBIs for High-A Winston-Salem. And let’s not forget Miguel Vargas, part of the haul of prospects at the trade deadline in July. Since leaving the South Side, Michael Kopech has a 0.63 ERA in 14.1 innings for the Dodgers. Vargas is hitting .114 in 79 at-bats since coming over from LA, and that includes one of those singles yesterday. Did I mention Dominic Fletcher, who came over from the Diamondbacks in the offseason? Fletcher is hitting .222 with zero homeruns and ten RBIs in 153 at-bats. Or Zach DeLoach, another offseason acquisition whose tattooing the ball at a .130 clip (3-for-23)? If not, my bad. DeLoach, Fletcher and Vargas are all slated to start today in Baltimore, along with Jacob Amaya, a seven-year minor league veteran whose 1-for-8 with the Sad Sox and 3-for-18 in his big-league career. No one in today’s lineup is hitting higher than Gavin Sheets’ .241. Mercy.

By the Numbers

The Sad Sox lost again last night, 5-3 to the Mets. That’s nine in a row in a 31-106 season, three games ahead of the pace set by the ’62 Mets in their 40-120 season. Here’s where it gets interesting, or depressing, depending on your viewpoint. In 60 games this season, the Sox have scored two or fewer runs. In other words, the Sad Sox have scored fewer than three runs a game 43.8 percent of the time. Wow. They’ve been shut out fourteen times; gone 1-25 when scoring one run; and 2-21 when scoring two. So, when they score two or fewer runs in a game, there’s a better than 93-percent chance they’re going to lose. And Jerry Reinsdorf wants a new stadium? How sadly amusing.