Wednesday Ramblings

So I'm chillin' here at the business center of the Hilton Garden Inn in Columbia, Missouri. It was about a 13 hour drive door-to-door. After check-in, we went and got some grub at the Ruby Tuesday's right next door, then went for a dip in the hotel pool, and yes, I waited my 30 minutes. While waiting, I watched ESPNews over and over waiting for the Yanks and Red Sox games to go final. It looked like the Yanks were going to get a full game up on Boston when Fausto Carmona imploded with 2 outs in the 9th. 2 hit batters, a walk and the walkoff double to Loretta. Send the kid back to Buffalo already. 2 blown saves in 3 days and both were horrendous outings. I was expecting another Papi walkoff but it was one batter off. As I was driving here, listening to baseball talk on XM Radio, they brought up something that tied into my post from a few days ago about David Ortiz being clutch. I was wondering how often he came through compared to the amount of chances he had. Well, they answered my question, sort of. They threw out some research done by the guy who runs "The Joy of Sox." He has an entry that throws out a lot of Papi walkoff stats which basically show that he does come up big in clutch situations. Now, I never said he wasn't clutch. I was curious if it was more a perception because the opportunity to "be clutch" comes up often. Thanks to that blog for answering my questions. What timing. Here is what he found:
Since the end of the 2004 regular season, Ortiz has come to the plate in a walk-off situations 19 times -- and reached base 16 times. He is 11-for-14 (.786), with 7 HR and 20 RBI. Pretty impressive I must say. The guy is good.
The Yankee game went as expected with Wang again dominating at home. ESPN flashed a stat that he's 9-0 in his last 10 home starts. The guy has been remarkable all season long. The offense today also was pretty on. A-Rod seems to be turning it up. Jeter is making a run at the batting title. And Bobby Abreu chipped in with his 1st 2 hits as a Yankee. The lineup pounded out 14 hits, with Cairo being the only one who missed out on getting a base hit. Not bad. Surprisingly, Ron Villone couldn't preserve the shutout. Either way, all signs are pointing to another division title. Cano, Matsui, Sheffield, and Dotel should be back soon. The Red Sox had ample opportunity to put some distance between them and the Yanks but failed to do so. You have to credit the Yankees and Joe Torre for keeping things together. Now it's the Yankees turn to try and distance themselves from the Sox. The Sox were hit hard today with the news that Varitek would miss 4-6 weeks. Ouch. He is probably the one guy you don't want out of the lineup if you're a Sox fan. He's the team captain for a reason, and he is probably the best catcher in the game when it comes to working with the pitching staff. It'll be interesting to see how the Sox starters perform without him behind the plate. Perhaps they'll struggle like they did in spring training before Varitek returned from the WBC. From a Sox perspective, it's too bad this didn't happen 3 days ago. It would have been much easier to acquire a catcher. Now you have to hope that as guy clears waivers if you're going to bring someone in. Depending on the caliber of the catcher, you know the Sox will get blocked. It'll be tough to overcome. The Yanks need to take advantage.
Tomorrow, the wife and I will be at the Royals/Twins game in KC. Everybody knock on wood for good weather. It would really stink to have driven all this way to have to come back and do it again at a later time. Luckily to this point, we haven't run into the issue. The forecast looks promising.
Hope you're all finding good ways to beat the heat. Take care.
Peace, love and pinstripes.
J-Boogie