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| Josh Beckett – Evan Brunell |
Well, today’s a big day, isn’t it?
Either the Red Sox go home or they continue their improbable streak of winning eight of their last nine playoff elimination games.
Taking the hill tonight is, of course, Josh Beckett. The Beckett taking the hill is most certainly not one that we expected to take the hill this October — this one has a lot of questions surrounding him.
Terry Francona denied that Beckett tore his oblique, so what’s troubling him is a mystery right now. It can’t just be a strained oblique, can it, due to him receiving a cortisone shot? Whatever it is, even Beckett’s not deluding himself… but he’s trying to delude us:
Reporter: “Because of the oblique, have you had to adjust the way
you approach pitching at all or make any changes to do anything
differently?”Beckett hesitated for a moment. “No,” he said. (Boston Globe)
Really convincing there, Josh.
Meanwhile, the Sox are going up against “Big Game James” Sheilds, and it will be a tough task. Shields went 14-8 with a 3.56 ERA this year, but take a look at his home ERA: 2.59. As a matter of fact, he backed up that 2.59 ERA in Game One where he only gave up two runs but lost to the Magic Man, Daisuke Matsuzaka that night.
Beckett will need some similar magic tonight. Can he do it?
He’s going to have to, or the Rays will be headed to the World Series.
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BTW, for more on Beckett you should read Buster Olney today. He’s got a good list of things to look for if Beckett is going to pitch well or horribly.
And am I the only one who’s really annoyed that people are calling Shields “Big Game James”? I mean the guy has played in only one season where the Rays have not been the doormat of the AL East. He’s never been to the World Series (understandably not his fault) and has only pitched two games in the playoffs. Hopefully people will have to wait a bit longer to call him that.
BTW, for more on Beckett you should read Buster Olney today. He’s got a good list of things to look for if Beckett is going to pitch well or horribly.
And am I the only one who’s really annoyed that people are calling Shields “Big Game James”? I mean the guy has played in only one season where the Rays have not been the doormat of the AL East. He’s never been to the World Series (understandably not his fault) and has only pitched two games in the playoffs. Hopefully people will have to wait a bit longer to call him that.
Tom,
I did read what Olney wrote and thought it was great. Definitely something to keep in mind.
Globe: “This is the eighth time that the Red Sox have dropped three of the first five games in a best-of-seven or best-of-nine postseason series. On the seven previous occasions, Boston is 7-0 in Game 6.”
RE: GAME THREADS
Just so everyone knows, with the move to the new platform, we finally have auto-publish back! It’s a bug that we weren’t able to fix on the old site for about a year. So don’t worry, there WILL be a game thread tonight, I have set it to automatically publish at 7:37. We’ll start having game threads publish 30 minutes before gametime.
Awesome job Evan. I am running into a few problems signing in and loading the page all the way. But it could be just me. I’m sure the bugs will work out alright after a few days. Overall it looks fantastic though. A pleasant surprise. Keep up the good work! Go Sox!
Sam,
Sorry for the issues. You should try logging in now, make sure you use your username, not e-mail. Could you clarify where the page stops loading?
Well I’m not entirely sure if anything is wrong at all with the main page. It just doesn’t look right. The first few headlines come up just fine, but then the page is broken with a pretty large empty space, followed by a banner, and then the older are below that posts below it. And I’m not seeing any pictures. But I don’t know. If I’m the only one whose having the problem it may be just my computer or something.
As for logging in. I am using my username and all. It’s just after I press log in it goes right back to the main page like normal but I’m not signed in. So I don’t know. Sorry if I’m not explaining it clear enough. I suppose bugs are natural with a transfer like this. It does look great though so I’m not gonna complain too much lol. Good luck on getting it smoothed out.