What’s stranger than a sweep in Toronto? Where do we start? Well, for one, I’m talking about the Sox sweeping the Jays, not the other way around. Buchholz beat Halladay (who only lasted five innings). Big Papi went deep twice. So did Nancy (who hit his on consecutive ABs). Brett Cecil pulled a Benny Agbayani into his own dugout. And Beckett looked like the reincarnated John Smoltz. If I was still in elementary school I’d say this was “opposite week.”

Plus the first game of the series, the one where Beckett allowed seven ER and the pen allowed another two, pretty much broke my whole “pick two” theory. I guess I shouldn’t quit my day job to become the next Bill James quite yet.

So the Sox enter another showdown series with the MFY up one game in the Wild Card and down, carry the two, six and a half in the East. As Allan at Joy of Sox pointed out, it’s a good thing we all didn’t jump off a bridge after the Texas series. However, if they take another pounding from the MFY this weekend, there might be a few 911 calls from above the Charles.

If Friday was supposed to be a spark, then the Sox were trying to start a fire with 5 giant logs and no kindling. The spark was extinguished by the 2nd inning of the next game and the Sox ended up a full game back in the Wild Card race heading up to the dome of horrors in Toronto. (You don’t want to know how far back they are in the division. It’ll just make you cry.)

There’s the 6.75 ERA from the starters in the last two games of the series that you can blame, or the lovely 0-10 performance with runners in scoring position. But ever since the all-star break, I think it boils down to this: when the 2009 Red Sox are in sync, they’re a playoff team. When they’re not, they’re at-best a .500 team.

Break the game down into the following three areas: hitting, starting pitching and bullpen. You generally need two of those areas to play well if you want to win a game. Although, if the starting pitcher is truly awful (see Smoltz, John), then you can ignore this whole theory since the game is probably already lost. Sure, sometimes you’ll get all three and the game will be a cakewalk. And sometimes you can win with just one of three. But to win most games, you need either fantastic pitching from start to finish, or a good start and good enough offense to overcome a bullpen collapse, or to score enough runs to overcome a bad hangover from your starter and then ride the bullpen to close out the game. Someone needs to remind the Sox that this is not a 3 groups, 3 cabs game. They need to put everything together for a shot at October, and they’d better do it soon.

Nine pitches. Nine pitches is how quickly this game went from the worst game of the season, to possibly the best. Nine pitches is what it took from feeling like we were back in 2006, to fast-forwarding to 2007. Earlier in the day the Sox acquired Alex Gonzales too, so it really seemed like 2006 deja vu all over again. The Sox were about to lose a game that, quite frankly, they deserved to. Their only offense through the first eight innings was a 2-run laser by Papi in the 6th. Lester pitched well, but not the kind of lights-out performance you wanted to see from your #1b starter against the second place team in the wild-card with only a half-game lead.

The problem is, the 9th inning looked like it was going to be a fantastic comeback. The first three runners reached base, so the lead was cut to one and there were runners on 1st and 2nd. Then everything started to collapse. Chris Woodward was told to bunt the runners over. Instead he looked like a girl you begged to play on your co-ed softball team who is afraid to make contact with the ball. (Yes Chris, I just called you a girl.) I’ve never seen a batter pull back his bunt TWICE only to have the ball fall in for a strike. So with one out, Tito reached into his bag of tricks and pinch ran for the runner at 2nd, Tek, with Buchholz.

Tito never checked Buchholz’s resume though. If he did, he would have seen that he was a 2004 graduate of Jeff Suppan’s school of base running. So when Dustin hit a double off the wall in left, Buchholz went half-way, stopped, broke towards third, broke back towards second, and finally took off for third. As he rounded third, he stumbled and was thrown out at home by three steps. For the box score, that’s a double with runners on 1st and 2nd that ends with runners at 2nd and 3rd, no runs and an out. Someone should send that to Jayson Stark. And to think that I was the one wondering if he should try a double-steal with Ellsbury on 1st.

So here we were, down by one when the Sox should have been at least tied if not up by one. Everybody in Boston is swearing at Tito and/or Buchholz as Victor Martinez came to the plate. It also looked like Frank Francisco was finally getting his command back, putting V-Mart into a 1-2 hole. But slowly Martinez started fouling off tough pitches. And just Don told us that the Sox were down to their last strike (one of the baseball phrases I absolutely despise) on Francisco’s 8th pitch of the at bat, V-Mart lines a double down the line actually scoring the runner from second (and third)! The Sox had the lead, and suddenly everybody in Red Sox Nation was ignoring Buchholz brain fart and instead cheering on Victor, including Frank Viola in the NESN booth.

It was all downhill from there. So while the final score will simply say 8-4, and the standings will simply say that the Sox are 1.5 games up in the wild-card, it was really a span of nine pitches that turned this game from the worst loss of the year, to the best. Now maybe Buchholz should stick to the pitcher’s mound.

Hi, I’m Richie Sexson. You may remember me from such brawls as last year’s attempt to decapitate former Sox pitcher Kason Gabbard. Are you becoming a punching bag for the opposing pitcher? Did you happen to get hit yesterday and would like it to stop? Well, you’re in luck because this video will teach you how to get opposing pitchers to move on and stop hitting you. First you’ve got to get hit with a pitch. Ok, you don’t actually have to do this first step. In my infamous brawl, the pitch was nowhere near me, but I wanted to try out my new system. Once you get hit, start running hard at the pitcher. When you’re about 30 feet from the mound, remove your helmet, but don’t throw it yet. (Youks, wake up, this part’s important!) When you’ve reached the annoying piece of shit who hit you and are a point blank range, then throw your helmet at him as hard as you can and proceed to tackle him. At this point the rest of your team should be bolting out of the dugout to protect you, and no pitcher will fuck with you again. Hope this helps you avoid a few bruises and maybe inflict a few of your own.

P.S. Box score line of the night goes to Mike Lowell:

		AB	R	H	RBI	HR	BB	K	SB	LOB	Season Avg
M. Lowell pr-3b		3	3	2	3	2	0	0	0	1	.297

The two home runs are nice, but see the two little letter’s next to his name? PR? Mike Lowell, pinch runner? Now I’ve seen it all.

That was not exactly what I consider to be a productive road trip, unless the production was “Red Sox 2006: The Remake.” The good news is that the Sox only lost four straight to the MFY this time, although this may have been even more painful. AAAA teams could have at least put up a single run in 31 innings in the new MFY Stadium. Even Tek should have been able to pop one up to the second baseman for a home run. But not the 2009 Red Sox. They go 15 scoreless innings in the Friday game, then get shut out in a simple nine innings game on Saturday and don’t put up a run until the 8th on Sunday. Since I’m a visual person and a big fan of numbers, this may be a better way to describe it:

000 000 000 000 000
000 000 000
000 000 0

or:

000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 0

or:

(0 * 331)3 (I know, it doesn’t have the same effect)

Really the only people you can’t blame are the starting pitchers who are still on the 25-man roster. (The Sox made enough roster moves during the series that you’d think Theo confused his fantasy team with the real team.) So, basically that’s Lester, Beckett and Buchholz. Lester and Beckett were both fantastic. Buchholz was good, and considering his last outing at Baltimore, certainly turned in a performance better than expected. The bullpen was either fantastic or awful (6.2 IP, 2 ER on Friday vs 1 IP, 4 ER on Sunday), but again, the real bane of the team were the bats.

One week ago the Sox were 0.5 game out of first place, and now they’re 6.5 games back. Three years ago, the Sox were 1.5 games back heading into the Boston Massacre and ended up 6.5 games out. I was hoping for some deja vu from the beginning of the season, not 2006.

I know it was only one game, but it really felt like the MFY tied up the season series with that bashing. Of course, I have to keep telling myself that the Sox still hold an 8-1 lead in the head-to-head matchup this season. (And the Sox are now 3.5 back in the division…)

Only one good thing came out of yesterday night: it may have been the last time that John Smoltz has to get beaten up in a Red Sox uniform. From now on if he wants to wear a Sox jersey he has to purchase one at the store like the rest of us. After he couldn’t get a single out in the fourth inning, Theo finally put him out of his misery and DFAed him! Who cares what he can do in October if he’s going to cost the Sox a chance of getting there. Oh, and if the Sox are playing in October, the Sox better not let him throw out the first pitch. I’m afraid the opposing team will run up and hit it.

So long John. Enjoy your hall-of-fame induction in five years, and please pretend like this past season never happened. Red Sox Nation is going to try to.

If I never had to see or hear about Evan Longoria again for the rest of my life, I’d be a happy man. He is Frank Catalanotto on steroids. (Oh, that probably wasn’t the best word to use…but I wouldn’t mind a 50 game suspension…). He ties the game with a solo shot in the 8th. So when you’re in the 13th inning, with the winning run at 3rd, two outs, and first base open, why on earth do you pitch to him?? He’s only batting a mere .370 with 7 HR against the Sox in 11 games. In fact, of his 17 hits against the Sox only 5 have not been for extra bases for an OPS of 1.36. So Tito, please remind me again why you didn’t walk him? Right now I would contemplate giving him the Barry Bonds treatment and intentionally walking him if the Sox were up four with the bases loaded, two outs and Longoria up.

The fact that the Sox were even in the 13th inning was a miracle. In both the 8th and the 10th the Rays had the bases loaded and nobody out, and didn’t manage to score. So how many times did Tito think the Sox pitchers would spin the slot machine and get jackpot in a row? Now the Sox are sitting at 1.5 GB, and the bullpen is burnt out going into a big series at the New Toilet. Good work Tito.

Believe it or not, I haven’t been in a cave since the trading deadline. I, like every other red-blooded member of Red Sox Nation, was frantically clicking refresh on ESPN.com trying to figure out if the Sox would pick up a batter, a frontline pitcher, or both. And more importantly, how many of the Sox prospects would have adjust on a new ballclub for this to happen.

Theo pulled off a good one, trading The Big Masty and two other prospects to Cleveland for Victor Martinez. I’m sad to see Masty leave us, he seemed like a good kid and has a lot of potential with that crazy arm slot and sinking fastball. But how often do you get a switch hitting multiple-time all star catcher? Oh, I guess once a decade if you’re the Sox.

Martinez has a little ritual of giving each of the other 24 players a unique handshake before the every game, meaning that the Sox players are going to have to learn a new ritual. I don’t know if each player gets to choose his own handshake, but if they do, can mine be up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-select-start? (If you’re not a child of the 80s, I’m sorry, that made zero sense to you.)

And the new ritual seems to be working. I know it’s just the Orioles, but right now the Sox should be ecstatic with any sweep, especially one on the road. The fact that Martinez went a paltry 5-6 in the last game, should only add to our confidence that they might be able to keep this up. Oh yeah, and some guy named Ortiz also had a pretty good first two games. Although with the way that Buchholz pitched on Sunday (almost blowing a 7-0 lead and only going 4+ innings), maybe the Sox should have traded him for Halladay, or Adrian Gonzalez, or Jared Washburn…or a color man better than Dave Roberts.