A bad month of baseball

This has been a very frustrating stretch of baseball from the Red Sox. Thanks to help from others, they're still only 4 games out, but they are rapidly approaching a time when it won't matter what other people do if they don't start playing significantly better.

• Every time there's a double-header, so broadcaster will make the comment that "if you want to sweep a double-header, first, you have to win the first game." The same is true for series during the course of a season. Want to sweep a series? You've got to win game 1. Lose game 1, and you're playing catch-up. After losing opening day in New York, the Red Sox went on to win the first game of their next 5 series. Since that time, the Red Sox have opened 15 series. Their game 1 record?
  
  4-11.
  
  They're playing catch-up all the time. Badly...



• Interestingly, in that entire stretch, which is almost two months now, they've played back-to-back home series exactly once. The firt game of their second series, which was there fifth consecutive game in one city? One of the 4 wins.



• In the last month, they're 11-16. Their longest streak of wins is 2, and they've done it only twice. That's right, back-to-back wins only twice in the last month. The 2 games in New York when they beat the Yankees are their only consecutive wins against any opponent since the back-to-back walk-offs against Oakland in early May.
  
  Their longest streak of losses is 4. They've scored 136 runs, which isn't great but isn't bad, and allowed 169, which is absolutely awful.
  
  The score of the average win has been 6.7-2.5.
  The score of the average loss has been 8.8-3.8.
  
  They've been awful.



• The starting pitching, in particular, has really let them down.
  
  
  
  

  5/12/2005-6/11/2005

  	GS	IP	ERA	QS	IP/S	WHIP
  Arroyo	5	25.67	7.71	2	5.13	1.64
  Clement	5	30.67	4.99	3	6.13	1.3
  Gonzalez	1	3.33	18.9	0	3.33	3.3
  Miller	6	34.33	5.24	3	5.72	1.49
  Wakefield	5	28.33	8.26	0	5.67	2.08
  Wells	5	31	5.23	2	6.2	1.16
  Total	27	153.33	6.46	10	5.68	1.56

  
  
  
  Those numbers are gruesome and, I think, speak for themselves...



• Not that the bullpen's been much better, compiling an ERA of about 5.5 over that same stretch.



• The old cliche is that the game is all about "pitching and defense". I don't believe it. The game is about out-scoring the opposition. You can't win without offense any more than you can win without "pitching and defense". But there offense has been mediocre over the past month, and the "pitching and defense" has been awful. That's a recipe for disaster. As they're clearly demonstrating...