Hung Over Or Just Plain Drunk?

Are the Red Sox hung over from the off-season or were they just flat out drunk this weekend? Judging from recent evidence collected in Toronto, I am leaning towards the latter. I say this because the Sox were stumbling all weekend against the lowly Jays and it sure looked to me like their collective blood alcohol was above what is permissible under Massachusetts state traffic law. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the guys started boozing around 8:30 EST on Friday and by the time Mike Timlin gave up the game winner on Sunday afternoon, the hometown boys were three sheets to the wind. Wells was flat out housed on Saturday, while Kevin Millar and Mark Belhorn were doing Dudley Moore impressions all weekend. Manny seemed to sober up a bit on Sunday, but his senseless steal of third in the seventh proved he wasn’t quite ready to get behind the wheel. And please don’t get me started with the drunk bastards in the pen. Now I know what they do to kill time out there.

There is no sugar coating this weekend – it was ugly with a capital U. It all started on Friday night when Keith Foulke entered the game and started handing out singles like they were souvenir bobbleheads and everyone in the Jays lineup was entitled to one. In case you missed it, Foulke came in with a three run lead and the softest save opportunity he will ever see, but then gave up two runs and ended up loading the bases before getting the final out. It was about as pretty as watching the fat chick from Heart (Ann Wilson) try squeezing into a string bikini. Foulke was helpless out there of Friday night, looking like anything but the guy who shut down the evil empire last year.

Foulke wasn’t the only stumbling drunk out there this weekend. Mark Belhorn was waving at everything under the roof, Kevin Millar proved the Yankee series was a fluke and David Wells showed why he should be working in a Baghdad bomb factory. Wells gave up three jacks in four minutes on Saturday and that clearly is not a good sign for a guy who has had trouble over his career keeping the ball out of the bleachers. With an ERA of almost nine over Wells first two starts, is it too early to ask whether the Sox should have saved some money and gone with Frank Castillo or Pedro Astacio instead of Orson. Probably so, but with three more poor starts, the people in Boston are going to begin wondering if number three is a Yankee plant. Meanwhile, Millar had a 1-11 weekend after being a tough out at Yankee Stadium earlier in the week. Making matters worse, as per usual, Millar had some very unproductive outs when runners had to be moved. This is typical Millar, but just because its customary, doesn’t make it more appetizing. Has this guy ever hit it to the right side with a runner on second and no outs? If anyone can answer this in the affirmative, please point me in the right direction.

Can you believe that Mark Belhorn has already struck out eleven times this year? That is not a misprint. ELEVEN TIMES! That is 11 K’s in six games and it puts him on pace to easily shatter the Adam Dunn’s year old record. Last year, Belhorn earned some points for his run production and his walks, but such virtues have not shown up in the early stages of 2005. He has no walks or RBI’s over the season’s first week and he looks a lot like the player who was almost benched before he warmed up and hit that big dong in game six of the ALCS last year. The word coming out of Spring Training this year was Belhorn was going to be more aggressive in 2005, hoping to avoid taking so many strikes early and thus reducing his exposure to unfavorable counts. I have no confidence that this strategy will pay any dividends whatsoever since Belhorn is just as prone to rack up strikes swinging as he does taking pitches. I probably asked this question 112 times last year, but it bears repeating: have you ever seen a guy swing and miss pitches as badly as Belhorn?

I am not going to dwell only on the negatives today and therefore I would like to point out that Bronson Arroyo and David Ortiz must have been appointed as designated drivers while the rest of the team boozed it up this weekend. Ortiz was typical Papi, hitting that game tying bomb on Saturday to pull the Sox even. The only spot on Papi’s resume this weekend came on Sunday when he failed to knock in Manny from third with two outs in the 8th. I have become so used to Papi coming through in such spots that I was speechless when Ortiz popped out to end that inning. Meanwhile, Arroyo was very good on Friday night, throwing six very strong innings. The one thing you can say about Brandon is he has balls. Last year, he proved his worth by wearing those corn rows, shutting down the Angles and plunking the purse snatcher. Friday night, he showed the spine necessary to throw inside early in the count and come back later with breaking stuff when he is on the wrong side of the count. His slider to right-handers is more then passable and his backdoor curve to lefties was very effective Friday night. I don’t care how the staff sorts itself out – this guy deserves a spot in the rotation.