LyfLines: Monday Pythagorean, 5/4/2009

All good things come to an end, including 11-game winnings streaks.

Both the hitting (11th in the AL) and the pitching (14th in the AL) were bad this week. But at least they tended to be bad at the same time, and blowouts with close wins leads to better records with the same run distributions. And they did take 2 of 3 in the first road series. The big problem is that, so far, they've not been able to handle Tampa Bay. They can't hit Garza, and Longoria and Pena play like Ruth and Gehrig against Boston.

At some point, someone different will carry the team for a while. Thus far, it's been Youkilis, helped out by Bay, Lowell and Drew, with some help from Varitek. And not much more.

Ortiz is about to come out of it, though. He had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week, with just four hits, three singles and a double. But he's starting to look like himself again - he took two walks on Saturday night that were the best plate appearances he's had this season. If he can maintain the approach, he'll be productive soon.

Obviously, that was a very painful way to end a winning streak, throwing the ball all over the place, dropping it, and losing a game in which you'd had a couple of different four run leads. But there are going to be a couple of those every year, and you can't spend too much time worrying about it. Likewise, some nights, like Thursday, you go up against someone who has your number with a starter that doesn't have it, and you lose big. Again, not something you spend a lot of time worrying about.

Seems a shame, though, to have pumped some life back in to Tampa. The Red Sox seem to be a good luck talisman for them right now. They're 5-2 against Boston, 6-13 against everyone else.

Brad Penny had a very good start on Sunday, following up a disaster start on Tuesday. It is, I think, important to note that the disaster start on Tuesday was seriously abetted by the defense. There were double play balls in both the second and third innings on which they failed to retire anyone, and he could have been out of the third with a 7-1 lead instead of out of the game in the third tied at 7. We don't know, yet, how the Brad Penny experiment will end up working out, but there have been as many positive signs as negative thus far, or nearly so.

I need to see two more really bad starts from Josh Beckett before I get worked up about him. So far, I'm in the "I'd really like him to perform better" mode, not in the "what the heck is wrong with Beckett" mode.

Red Sox Player of the Week: Some week, someone else will be their best hitter. So far, it's been Youkilis every week, as he piled another 22 plate appearances of .300/.417/.650/1.067 on to his season line.

Red Sox Pitcher of the Week: As you might guess from that 6.43 runs allowed/game number, there weren't a lot of strong candidates here. Okajima and Ramirez each threw four scoreless innings in relief, but the prize goes to Tim Wakefield. The start on Monday was fantastic, the one on Saturday kind of shaky but adequate, and he gave them two of their best three starts on the week, and he started two of the three games that they won.