Game 11: Rays 3 Sox 2

Price was just too much for the Sox to handle today. And one bad inning sunk Lester. Even in the 1-run game he had against the Indians, I remember cruising for awhile, then hitting a stretch where he couldn't find the strike zone, and then getting back on track. Same thing happened in this game and the Rays capitalized.

The hitting didn't actually look that bad. There were a lot of non-regulars with a tough lefty on the mound (Cameron for Ellsbury, McDonald for Drew, Lowrie playing third so Youkilis could DH for Ortiz). It didn't seem like Price was blowing people away of making people look silly. The Sox got 9 base runners against him in 7 2/3 (5 hits, 2 BBs, and 2 HBPs). But once again, no one could get the big hit when it counted. Mike Cameron left a man on 2nd base in the 6th. Jed Lowrie left two on in the 8th. Big Papi flew out to deep right to end the game.

I was looking up some stats today with the Sox getting rained out tonight and here's what I think is ailing the team:

1. Pitching is the biggest culprit. A lot of this can be tied to Matsuzaka (15 runs), Lackey (10 runs), and Wheeler (7 R), but giving up 72 runs in 11 games is unacceptable and is the worst in the majors. Some of this is bad luck (a strand rate of only 63.5% is the 2nd worst in baseball) but it's also just plain bad pitching. We have to do better and we will: the team ERA will lower from 6.77 to something closer to the expected fielding independent pitching (xFIP) rate of 4.37 over the course of the season.

2. Bad luck for the hitters. As a rule of thumb, you can expect your batting average on balls in play (BABIP) to be 120 pts higher than the percentage of your hits that are line drives (LD%). So the Sox are 20th in the Majors with a 0.176 LD% and they're 23rd in MLB with a 0.266 BABIP when you would expect it to be 0.296. On top of that, the Sox are currently 28th with a batting average of 0.192 with runners in scoring position.

What we need is a couple of days off and to get Lady Luck on our side.