bats and arms go to sleep simultaneously

[Greg1983]

As bad as E-Lo was tonight, I keep remembering that the Sox had runners and first and second with nobody out in the top of the first and FAILED TO SCORE. Obviously, you can't waste opportunities like that in games this big.

For that matter, we lost 5-2. Even with all those early walks, 6 runs would have won this game. The Sox have big bats in the lineup...6 runs shouldn't be inconceivable, should it?

So, without letting E-Lo slide for his outing (which was awful, sick or not), I really think the Sox offense did not come ready to play tonight.

It begs the question, why does this entire team seem to go to sleep simultaneously? Why is it so rare for the bats to bail out the pitching, or for the arms to bail out the offense? I know it's tempting to blame Manuel, and I'd love to see him canned as much as anyone else, but is the answer that simple?

Or am I just imagining my whole theory? I'm the first to admit that I have no hard data to back me up. But I have a definite sense that you can tell by about the 3rd inning if the Sox will have a chance to win, or if it's another night of corpseball.

I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts...

[cheeses_h_rice]

No, you're not imagining things. The Sox's offense has failed to materialize a TON of times this season, especially after the first 2 innings. The first inning tonight started promisingly enough, with Robbie and CLee with singles, but then Frank completely killed the rally with a GIDP and then Maggs swung at the first pitch and popped out. This pattern repeated itself throughout the game, with Paulie being probably the biggest goat.

In 2000, our offense could overcome a lot of this crap. Not so this year...

[DonkeyKongerko]

How many games can I think of where we scored maybe a run or two in the first and maybe bookended it with meaningless 8th or 9th inning runs?? This team is a giant tease and I'm sick of being teased. I mean jeez it's September and this team still looks as out of sorts as it was during the first two months when Jerry Manuel was blaming the cold weather for our slow start.

[kempsted]

Interestingly enough Minnesota has been worse than us at Grounding into double plays and I don't believe that their BA with men in scoring position is better than ours.

Every fan of every team that watches them day in and day out think that they are bad in these situations. Why? Easy. To be good means to hit .333 - that would be a fantastic team average for average with men in scoring postion. That mean 2/3 of the time they will fail to produce even when they are great. So yes - the Sox fail to produce more than they succeed ... AS DOES EVERY OTHER TEAM. It is an illusions kids. You just care more about the Sox. Minnesota has blown a lot of opportunities against the Sox. We just see it as our pitcher pitching out of a jam. But when our team does it it is us sucking.