Game 74: Friars 5 Sox 1

What a miserable day for baseball. Three separate rain delays before the game got called mid way through the 8th inning. And on top of that, we got bad Lackey. Three and 1/3 innings, 5 ER, 4 Hs, 4 BBs, and 4 Ks. It didn't start well with Lackey giving up a home run to lead off the game (Venerable's first of the year). In the 4th, he walked the first batter, hit the second, and gave up a bunt single on a wet infield to load the bases. He struck out the next batter but followed that with a bases loaded walk (I hate 'em!), a hit by pitch, a wild pitch, and a single resulted in 4 runs. Bad Lackey, bad.

At the dish, the Sox best opportunity came in the first. Cameron hit a single but was entirely surprised by the pick off throw, and was out standing only 2 feet away from the bag. Ellsbury and Pedroia both walked and Gonzalez gave us our only run of the game with a single. So it should have been either two runs in or 1 run and the bases loaded with no outs. Youkilis flew out and Ortiz grounded out to end the inning and the threat.

Ortiz seems to be struggling and I can't help but notice that he seems to have stopped trying to go the other way too. Seems like those two facts are correlated. Sox got the day off before starting a series in Pittsburgh today. It'll be interesting to see how Tito gets playing time for Gonzalez and Ortiz while playing without a DH. I say keep A-Gon in the lineup.