Sox Send Angels to Hell

As gratifying as it was to see the Sox hang 17 runs on the Angels, I take the results with a grain of salt. The Angels are in the same position as the Sox this year. They are both struggling perennial playoff teams who lost key components in the off season. Both are floundering a few games under .500 and looking up from an unaccustomed position in the bottom portion of their divisional standings (although the Sox have to play much stiffer competition).

Still it was fun to see Boston hand out a beat down instead of losing another closing one. (The Sox are 1-5 in extra frames this season.) Even the much maligned J.D. Drew got in on the act going 4-5 with 3 RBI and 2 runs. Mike Lowell stayed hot with a perfect 4-4 night that included 4 RBI and 2 runs. (Can we make him the full time DH please?!) Clay Buchholtz continued to pitch pretty well. It wasn't his best start, but it was solid, and of course, he got plenty of runs. We'll see if Jon Lester can break out of his malaise tonight.

I usually don't care for Tom Verducci that much, but here's an interesting article from today. It's about the prevalence of the walk and the strike out in contemporary baseball. One stat, the walk, no one used to care about from a hitter's performance. The other stat, the strike out, used to be an absolute no-no for hitter. Now even elite hitters strike out 100 times a season. The combination of the two is cutting down on the amount of bat-to-ball contact in MLB games. It's an interesting observation.