I like Mark Buehrle. Aside from all the nice long fly balls he gave up, you can always count on him to be nice and quick. If he pitches against Roy Halladay, you can watch a whole game in 2 hours (1 1/2 if you fast forward commercials), but then you’d be watching Blue Jays-White Sox and why would you do that?

Bowden looked like Dice-K with 8 baserunners over 5 innings, but only 2 runs allowed. Luckily, Dice-K looked like Lester last night, so the bullpen was prepared. Congrats to the kid on his first major league win.

As for the offense, Dustin is en fuego lately. I love the Fenway crowd chanting MVP for him. This has to be the first time there’s been a 5′7″ cleanup hitter, right? He certainly provided protection for Big Papi. Speaking of Papi, correct me if I’m wrong, but is this two days in a row he has had an infield hit? I feel like the world is upside down, but you know what? I like it.

Wow, I’ll bet Dice-K qualifies for the league leaderboard in ERA now. 8 scoreless innings, only 2 hits! Sure, he walked two, but that still leaves his WHIP for the day at 0.5, his best since April Fools Day (sadly, that’s not a joke). Add a nice performance by the offense (I’ll even overlook the 12 they LOB), and the Right Sox win over the Wrong Sox.

With the Wrong Sox in town, seeing Orlando Cabrera makes me sad. He was such a favorite of mine in ‘04, and I always rooted for him with “the The Angels Angels of Anaheim”. Until, that is, the playoffs last year. He hit a double, and as he stood on second, he did the popping the name thing with his jersey, showing off the “Angels” on his chest with an angry look on his face. So far as I know, neither the Sox, the Boston media, or the fans said anything bad about him when he left, which considering their actions upon the departure of players like Pedro, Manny, and Nomar is shocking. Why did Orlando need to show up the Boston fans who still cheer for him?

I swear Remy said Michael Bolton starts tomorrow. I know he meant Michael Bowdon, but I just had an Office Space moment. Good luck with your debut, kid.

I woke up this morning looking forward to the day. The Sox were on the verge of a sweep and then Beckett was going to come back to face a team he held to one run over 8IP just a few weeks ago. Things were looking good. And then I went to ESPN.com and couldn’t figure out which headline was worse: “Late Giambi heroics drive Yanks by BoSox” or “Beckett scratched, will visit Dr. Andrews.”

What the hell? I go to sleep for a couple of hours and the Sox are literally falling apart! But that’s OK, since at least they’ll have the pitcher with the 5th highest ERA on the mound on Friday. Oh, wait, that’s right, Dice-K doesn’t qualify for the league lead in ERA since he has only thrown 132.2 innings and the minimum is 133.* Good thing the pen has been lights-out…or not.

*Thanks to my friend Aaron for the Dice-K stat.

Most day/night doubleheaders have an afternoon game followed shortly thereafter by a game starting around twilight. Well, screw tradition. In my half of the world (that would be China for the time being), the Sox won the first game of their doubleheader by taking it to Sir Sidney and his kingdom of pinstriped men with a 7 A.M. start. Then, the Sox get a chance at the sweep in the second game that will start at 1 A.M. That’s right, it’s the new 7AM(day)/1AM(night) doubleheader. They’ve thought of everything in the Far East.

A lot of people (including my co-blogger) are calling the MFY dead this season. Until they’re mathematically eliminated, I won’t dare make that predication. However, sweeping the doubleheader would be sweet for two reasons:

1. Forcing the MFY to make up eight games in a month would be a whole lot harder than six, and…
2. After all the verbal fellatio that the talking heads have been giving the Toilet because of it’s last year, how nice would it be for the Sox to leave there for the last (regular season) time with a sweep? The Sox had been given enough swirlie’s there, it would be all too sweet to turn the tables just before the old place gets destroyed.

Lester starts the back-end of the doubleheader, and hopefully we all remember the last time he pitched vs. the MFY (ok, it was a shameless plug, but can you blame me?). Let’s flush the Toilet.

When the Sox are on the Wednesday ESPN game, it should be a reason to celebrate. I get to watch the Sox in HD and listen to Dave O’Brien, one of the best play-by-play guys around (second only to Jon Miller, in my opinion). The problem is when I have to be in the car and listen to the XM radio broadcast. When the Sox are home, I have to listen to the excruciating Dale Arnold, who has an awful radio voice and can’t seem to keep on top of the game. (”It’s a fly ball and… wow! Diving catch! No wait, it’s dropped! That was almost an incredible play, let me tell you all about it… and oh yeah, 3 runs scored.”) I actually look forward to road games where I get to listen to whoever the home team’s announcers are.

Unfortunately, when it’s a Yankee game, that means Suzyn Waldman. I want to root for the first woman to be a full-time MLB broadcaster, but I just can’t. You know the saying “a face made for radio?” Well, she has a voice made for print. She’s also appointed herself as the team mother, getting a little too emotionally involved, like last year when she forgot there’s no crying in baseball.

I don’t know if she’s worse or if Dale is. I can embrace the schadenfreude of Yankee fans having to endure her every day, but I hate that my team has such a bad announcer. Memo to the Sox: you have Dan Hoard doing a great job in Pawtucket, why don’t you give him a call-up?

Hopefully, more to come about the actual game tonight when I get back from softball. Here’s hoping my eardrums don’t explode listening to Waldman on the way there.

EDIT: Well. I left my car nervous with Manny Delcarmen on the mound with a 4-2 lead. How excited was I to see that not only did he pitch a 1-2-3 inning with 2 K’s, but the Sox managed to score 7 more, including a grannie by Fuck-Yeah! A great win, and another nail in the Yankees’ coffin.

Maybe it’s why I decided that playing a round of golf was more important than watching Sox-Yankees live. Maybe it’s because I saw the 7th inning score on the way home, making the recording much less interesting. All I know is that Sox-Yankees just isn’t the same as it used to be. I used to take the day off from work to watch a day game when the Sox were playing in the Bronx, but this time around, I just don’t really care. The hype on ESPN and such-like is out of control, as always, but I can’t get that worked up about an August game against a third place team that’s 9.5 games out, and 5 behind the Sox (going into the game). It’s just another August game, and it doesn’t really matter who they’re playing. I care a whole lot more about the Tampa series in a couple weeks (against an actual first place team), especially since the Sox are due to break the home sellout streak and I should be there. 

That said, I did watch the whole game once I was home, and it was nice to see the bullpen hold down the fort for once, especially when they had to pitch 4 innings. Who knew Manny Delcarmen could pitch with a lead and not give up a run? Not that a hit and two walks in a third of an inning is a good line, but he didn’t give up a run! Let’s celebrate! 

Am I the only one who thinks Tito yanked Okajima with 2 out in the 8th was so Paps could get a save? Okajima came in with two of Masterson’s runners on, got a strike out and a pop up, and wasn’t allowed to face Pudge. The guy’s hitting .208 with the Yankees (small sample size, I know), why don’t you think Okajima can get him out? But if you bring in Paps with 2 out and 2 on (tying run on deck), it’s a save situation, whereas if he starts the ninth (4 run lead to start the inning), it’s not. Hey, who am I to complain about padding a player’s stats when it results in a win?

One other thing I leanred today: Obama is a White Sox fan, and called Cubbie fans “fair-weather.” Them’s fightin’ words!

(Note from the editor: The views expressed in this blog post don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of the Dirty Watah blog. Other authors were frantically re-loading Yahoo while in China because they truly hate the MFY, and are thinking of staying up for the Thursday game that will be broadcast on TV in Shanghai at 1 A.M.)

Jere over at A Red Sox Fan From Pinstripe Territory has, with his mother Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, written “Dirty Water: A Red Sox Mystery” and asked a number of Sox bloggers to review it. Matt started on it, but once he found a description of Amalie Benjamin as the wunderkind of the Boston Globe, he dropped it like a hot potato. Matt, as you may know, has no great love for the quality of Amalie’s work (two years later, that post still shows up on the first page when you google “Amalie Benjamin”). When we went to visit Matt’s parents in LA a few weeks ago, what did we find in his childhood bedroom but a copy of Dirty Water. He thought it was following him around. Turns out his sister works at a mystery bookstore and though he’d like it. Minus the Amalie love, he probably would have. In the end, it fell to me to review the book, which works since I’m the one who likes to read anyways.

There have already been a number of reviews that hit the high points of the plot (see the Rutland Herald for one example, more are listed at the book’s blog), and I don’t want to spoil the story for you anyways, so this review is going to be about my opinion of the book. I’ll split it into three sections that I think deserve distinct review.

The mystery: I don’t read a lot of mysteries, but I thought this was a well-crafted plot. Throughout the story, you’re wondering how all the disparate pieces are going to fit together, and when they finally do, it’s a nice “A-ha” moment. It’s just plausible enough that you believe it, but not so obvious that you see it coming. You can go back and look at all the clues and see how it really fits together.

The baseball: I don’t want to give away any of the plot points here, but the parts about recruiting international players and the seedy side of some agents were great. You really get a feel for a part of baseball that often gets ignored and swept under the carpet. This was far and away one of my favorite parts of the book.

The characters: That brings me to my other favorite, and my least-favorite, part of the book. The detective, Rocky Patel, is so different and at the same time so real that I felt like I would recognize him if I met him on the street. He is both unflappable and empathetic. The rest of the characters, aside from the cameos by the Sox, also felt real. The appearances by the Red Sox, though, felt fake and contrived.

I expected to love the parts with the Sox. Since I, like so many fans, feel like the team is almost family, it should be great to read about them, right? The problem is, I have my own opinion on what those guys are like, my own “Imaginary Baseball World” (a la Kristen). Now, I know my views of the players are probably far from accurate, but I want to imagine Pedroia running around the clubhouse saying “fuck yeah!” to everything while insulting everyone, Youks as an overgrown frat boy, and Papi as a huge teddy bear with a temper when he’s wronged (like by an umpire with a called third strike). The characterizations in the book just didn’t jibe with my views of the players, which made reading those parts awkward. Once the book got past the players, it ended up pretty good.

Since Matt is currently in the air over the Pacific, I’ll hold down the blog for him. Apologies in advance for not being nearly as funny as him.

The Blue Jays radio guy mentioned early on that he thinks Dice-K is a Cy Young candidate. The numbers may be there, but if you regularly watch this guy pitch, I don’t see how you can have any faith in his ability. He seems to need the bases loaded before he can focus. If we can’t put cardboard cutouts on each base to distract him, maybe we can just convince him to pitch out of the stretch? 

It must be a problem with the pelvic thrust. It’s much more noticeable in person than on TV, but whenever Dice-K is pitching from the windup, he rocks back and forth and does a little hip thrust. Maybe that extra motion is what causes his lack of control?

Today wasn’t a typical Matsuzaka start, though, what with 8 hits, 5 runs, and only one walk (and that one intentional). I had to double check that Dice-K didn’t sneak into a Blue Jays uniform when Burnett gave up back-to-back walks in the third. Of course since those walks immediately come around and scored, it couldn’t have been Matsuzaka pitching.

Finally, congrats to Stanford boy Jed Lowrie for the winning home run. I remember watching him play second for the Cardinal during my first year on the Farm, and it’s great to see him do so well for the Sox. And its always fun to have the college 2B playing SS and the college SS playing 2B. Of course, Tito has to mess it up by playing Lowrie at third with Cora at short. Why, I have no idea. Isn’t this what we got Sean Casey for, to back up first and let Youks play third if necessary?  Last I checked, Casey’s .831 OPS is better than Cora’s .768. What did Sean Casey do to Tito?

After the Sox picked up Paul Byrd from the Indians for two Fenway Franks and a large pretzel, I remember reading a thread on SoSH where “Rudy Pemberton” wrote one of the all-time great posts (emphasis mine):

I’ve always liked Paul Byrd, lots of HR’s and few K’s but he keeps the ball in the park and will generally keep you in the game. He’s an average pitcher, which is really all the Sox need at this point.

Somehow that actually made sense in describing Byrd’s night. His HRs matched his walks at two, but he still gave the Sox 6 good innings and earned a win. It’s a whole lot easier pitching against the Blue Jays when you don’t have to face Doc Hallady. Considering how our rotation went from overstaffed early this season to in desperate need of a #4 and #5 now, Byrd is a wonderful addition. Now if he could only learn to intentionally walk Alex Rios in the first rather than give up 2-run bombs to him, we’d be in business.

And now for something completely different…I will be taking off tonight for China and will probably be NESN-less for the next week or so. No, I’m not going for the Olympics, and I’m pretty sure there’s no blogging Olympics in a country where “The Great Firewall of China” blocks out as many blogs as it can. But fear not Dirty Watah fans, my wonderful partner in blogging Kim will take over duties while I’m out.

BALTIMORE – AUGUST 19: Brian Roberts catches a classic 2-ball, 1-strike pitch from Daisuke Matsuzaka in the 4th inning at Camden Yards August 19, 2008 in Baltimore, Maryland.

I know Joe Morgan has never met a counting stat he didn’t like, but maybe if he watched Dice-K we’d finally get to agree that the Win statistic is useless. Apparently he’s attending the Manny Delcarmen School of Pitching with his 11 baserunners in 5 inning performance. That’s right, it’s a WHIP over 2! Like always, he wiggled out of most of the jams and only allowed 2 runs, but stayed in just long enough to qualify for the almighty “Win” stat. And while I probably shouldn’t be complaining about a guy who is 15-2 on the season with a 2.77 ERA, those 15 wins still don’t make up for the cost of Kim’s defibrillator training to re-start my heart every other inning while he pitches.

Also, for everyone who has already dug a grave for the MFY this season, I just want to remind these people that back on August 15, 2004 a certain Red Sox team was 10.5GB in the division and went on to win the World Series. I’m not saying the same will happen with the MFY, but they’ve come to bite us in the ass before. Just sayin’.