The stage was set for Daisuke Matsuzaka to have a big showing, but Brandon Moss and Manny Ramirez stole the spotlight.
Down by one in the top of the ninth inning, Moss, who had an RBI single earlier in the ball game, drove a Houston Street low and inside fastball over the right field fence for his first career homerun. Manny Ramirez
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I’m intrigued to see how Harden looks. When he was on he was just about my favorite pitcher to watch.
Not to get carried away but I brought it up before…as much as I expect Drew to bounce back I wonder if Moss could get you .280 20-25 homeruns sooner then later. Not an argument for now… but if someone goes down for an extended time it will be interesting to see what Moss can do. He has always had the build and that doubles power that projected to more home runs down the road, coupled with the ability to draw some walks. Hopefully Drew hits and we manage to get Moss some at bats without him wasting his development on the bench.
“Maybe if I used my American bat that ball maybe would have gone,” he said. “I thought I hit it good. I couldn’t use my bat because it wasn’t legal. Thank God I got some Japanese wood that I could use.”
- Manny’s postgame comments.
Wow, I get the feeling you fell asleep during the game. You could have checked the box score at least.
Manny was not 4 for 5, he was 2 for 5.
Where are you getting 3 2/3 scoreless from the pen? The bullpen gave up 3 ER in 5 inning. Isn’t that a run worse then the “mediocre ” Dice-K did in 5. You should have mentioned how bad Dice looked through 2 innings and how nasty his last 3 were (with 7 in a row retired). And Paps almost blew it. Even he admitted that the Brown base running mistake (not mentioned in your article) was “lucky.”
The bullpen was your star of the game? That’s terrible. At least you got the headline right.
Sorry I guess you are still in the process of fixing your article.
Sorry, I see you are in the process of editing your article. I wish I could edit my previous post.
Anonymous…I was in editing some busted formatting due to the video embed….but did not touch the content.
That said…I agree about the “bullpen” at large. They were given a one run lead with 4 innings to get through. And even though there was a solid stretch in the middle from Lopez, Corey, Okajima….I would say the failure of Snyder to lock down the 6th and Papelbon’s struggles in the 10th make it hard to give the entire bullpen an A+.
I do think Shawn’s thought process was to give credit to the period of time in between Snyder and Papelbon as “unsung heroes”.
For my part, Manny gets the Star of the Game award with Moss a close second and the three mids from the pen in 3rd.
The WPA data at Fan Graphs tends to back me up here: http://www.fangraphs.com/livewins.aspx?gameid=280325111
FWIW…..
someone fixed manny’s 4 for 5 night to “two doubles in five at bats.”
gotta love the fan graph WPA data. biggest play of the game: Manny’s double in the 10th. worst play of the game: Emil’s base running blunder.
Man, I went all day without hearing anything about the game, watched my recording on DVR and it didn’t record right before the 10th! Glad it turned out well. :)
A continuing pattern: Corey “the surgeon”, Oki OK in’08, Lopez still improving, Moss—3HR this month, Ellsbury’s D and a hit, Manny’s back. We’re really still finishing ST, and have the best record in baseball. No problem.
What happened to Paps, Snyder and Street? S.T. Aren’t Embree and Foulke wonders of the age!
In the battle of the newly healed, if Harden is on, Lester will need to be awesome, or Pedroia, Papi, Manny, Lowell, Drew, Youk will need to deliver.