LyfLines: Monday pythagorean

Well, there goes the "they're going to tease us by playing well the rest of the way" prediction...

Seven games, seven losses. Wow, did they treat us to some bad baseball this week. They lost games early, they lost games late, they lost games close, they lost games big - they just lost and lost and lost.

Koji Uehara has been a brilliant performer in a Boston uniform over the last two seasons. But he's a primary reason that the losing streak is now eight games. He allowed the winning run to score in the 9th inning of a tie game on Tuesday. Well, everyone will allow a run sometime. But then, on Friday, he entered the game with a 3-0 lead to start the 9th inning and promptly allowed five runs for a 5-3 loss.

On Wednesday and Saturday, the Red Sox scored a single run in each of the first three innings, then allowed the opposition to score more than three in a single inning while failing to score again themselves.

They were no-hit into the 7th on Thursday and managed only one hit for the game.

From Tuesday through Sunday, they averaged exactly three runs per game, as they scored three runs four times, were shut out once and scored six runs once.

As bad as the pitching was (5.429 runs allowed per game, 12th in the AL), the offense was worse (2.857 (14 in the AL).

I have no idea whatsoever whether Rusney Castillo is worth $72 thousand or $72 million. They, apparently, have a very good opinion of him. I hope that they are right. Let me just say this - they can afford a big payroll, and repeatedly have one. While there is an opportunity cost here (the dollars spent on Castillo cannot be spent on anyone or anything else), acquiring prime talent without giving up either current talent or draft picks is a good thing. You can overpay a little bit when the money is the sole cost.

Red Sox Player of the Week - The team was 0-7, and I was, on principal, just not going to give out awards this week. But there were some good offensive performances from Markus (Mookie) Betts (.273/.429/.364/.792, 4.52 runs created, 7.06 RC/25 outs) and Yoenis Cespedes (.318/.346/.591/.937, 4.36 runs created, 6.06 RC/25 outs), and then there was this, almost unbelievable, week from David Ortiz (.647/.769/1.118/1.887, 11.32 runs created, 47.15 RC/25 outs). That's got to be recognized even if it didn't lead to a win.

Red Sox Pitcher of the Week - Yeah, right. Ok, there were a couple of performances that weren't awful, as Kelly pitched five very strong innings and De la rosa was good again. And some members of the bullpen pitched well. But there were no award-worthy performances, so there's no award.