please make it stop...

this can't go on. "this" being:

INJURIES
they are not the Red Sox anymore. they are the Walking Wounded. i'm surprised they can find 9 healthy guys to actually take the field on any given night. oh. wait. they *can't*...half the guys on the field are just sucking it up & playing hurt. if you count the photos here, that is six...SIX!!! key players who have been hurt in a very short period of time. one of whom just happens to be the Captain, followed just *days* later by his back up. there were THREE catchers behind the plate for the Red Sox in the last week that had no experience with our pitching staff. pitching doesn't work very well if the pitcher can't communicate with his catcher. and for all the learning of picthing styles & signs & what a pitcher is going to throw in a certain situation, you might as well have had two guys playing together who spoke entirely different languages. how can a pitcher relax & pitch when he doesn't even know if the guy is going to CATCH it??


then we have things like Trot's bicep...

Lowell, King of All Things Double, who decided to foul balls off of BOTH his feet...

Loretta, who (contrary to what that photo *looks* like) took a pitch in the elbow & couldn't feel two of his fingers for several hours...(hmmmm...NICE forearms there...i digress. back to the task at hand.)

AND our #3 pitcher who pitched through a stress fracture in his ribs until he could not take it anymore & had to be put on the DL. we won't even talk about the mess that has tried to be his fill-in...or the other starting pitcher who has head...errr "arm" troubles.


THE PITCHING
i am not too sure what is going on here--i mean, i know there have been some bats. they've scored some runs (not without stranding twice as many, i will admit). at any rate, though it has been an issue at tims this season, it's not like the hitting hasn't been happening at all recently. but when you lose 5 straight, folks, that means that every. single. one. of your starting pitchers has LOST. *consecutively*. from Boomer, who has come back & can't find his groove--or apparently even show a *little* bit of effort at fielding a ball that might, oh i don't know, roll RIGHT OVER THE MOUND BETWEEN HIS FEET?!?

or the ace, the go-to guy, the SAVIOR WITH THE BLOODY SOCK, who decided that last night would be a good time to serve up a double for every strike out...

or The Kid, who seems to have lost his command & only makes half his pitches hit the target...

or Beckett, who has become his own Home Run Derby. not to mention the one & only Jason Johnson, who has yet to collect a single W as a Red Sox starter.

of course maybe if there was a bullpen that could be relied on in a jam (aren't they all jams lately??)... the first two speak for themselves--the EZs: UGLY in every sense of the word...

and Doofy aka "i will give up a run every time you bring me out of the pen"

the other guys are young & apparently all slumping together, with ERAs twice as high as they were coming into the All Star Break. (damn that break!!) Keith Foulke, The Man back in 2004, when everything came together, is nursing a broken heart & a wounded spirit. and even "set-'em-up & shut-em'-down" has become:
Watch It Go...

...and Blow Back-to-Back Saves


THE LACK OF EFFORT
we can't even talk about impeccable fielding anymore. all the injuries melted down to Papi on first base, where he made an error that led to 4 unearned runs--which, incidentally, were the 4 runs the Rays won by in that game. and Coco Crisp has suddenly forgotten how to catch a ball out there in center. Manny is playing shallow & just letting everything fly over his head...

and then there's Javy Lopez, who i suspect is a minion of Satan Steinbrenner, financially compensated to come in & not only refuse to actually hit the ball, but tell me, is he REALLY a Major League catcher with experience?? because it doesn't look like he has ever been behind a plate, calling a REAL game. how do they expect a pitcher to do HIS job when the guy he most needs to rely on looks like he was pulled off the street & handed gear?!


MANAGEMENT
or lack thereof. 'nuff said.


BOTTOM LINE
3 games back is not an insurmountable obstacle, IF they start hacking away at it *now*. which would mean not ending every game looking like this:

or we will end up looking like this in October.