Game 154 – Umps side with Sox, Again

Burnett pitched well but one inning and one bad call dampened his night. With 2 outs in the 5th and runners at 1st and 3rd Burnett got Youkilis to swing at a 2-2 pitch. The only problem was neither HP ump Fieldin Culbreth nor 1B ump Jim Reynolds agreed. That pushed the count full and on the next pitch Youkilis hit a ground ball up the middle. Then w/Burnett still a little pissed about the Youkilis AB he fell behind 2-0 to Casey before Casey drilled a 2-run 2B to right. The umps didn’t give up the hits to Youkilis or Casey but they blew a call that would have had the Jays out of the inning w/no runs scored. I hate to pick on umps b/c by and large they do a fantastic job but the Jays last 2 games against BOS have had several bad calls.

Making his 5th start against the Jays in the span of 1.5 mths, Paul Byrd made out ok. He gave up 6 hits and 1 walk for 3 runs in 6 innings. 5 of the 6 hits he gave up were doubles including 3 consecutive doubles in the 2nd. He was able to strand the others though as the Jays were 2 for 7 w/RISP against him (2 for 10 in the game).

The Jays had the tying run on 2nd w/none out in the 9th thanks to Lind’s little infield hit that Papelbon threw away past first. The Jays could do no better than move him to 3rd though. Rolen got ahead 3-1 but hit a weak line drive to short failing to move the runner. Zaun then grounded out to 2nd, which did move the runner. Snider went down swinging to end the game (his 3rd K of the game).

The Sox scored the winning run thanks to some wild relief work. Tallet got the 1st out in the 8th before giving up an infield 1B to Bay. He then walked Kotsay on 4 pitches. With 2 switch hitters coming up Cito decided to go to the RH Camp. I would have stuck w/Tallet there. I realize Camp is very good at getting ground balls and therefore you can try and get a DP ball, but I prefer Tallet pitching to a RH over Camp pitching to a LH. Camp also struggled to throw strikes as he walked Lowrie on 5 pitches to load the bases. Camp then got the ground ball from Varitek the only problem was it was a slow chopper to short that the Jays could only get one out of.

Sometimes pitchers just don’t think when fielding a ball. They just instinctively reach out w/their bare hand. Burnett did that in the 2nd today and it cost him as he couldn’t catch it cleanly w/the bare hand. Aside from the fact he had time to catch it w/his glove and still throw out Bay, why would you risk doing something to your throwing hand, it is not like that’s important to him. At least this ball wasn’t hit that hard so he wasn’t in any real danger of hurting himself but numerous times I’ve seen pitchers reach out w/their hand on balls hit fairly sharp back up the middle.

Here are the stats:
Adv+: Ellsbury
P-Adv+: Burnett (4)
NAdv: Rolen (12)
P-NAdv: Papelbon
WG: Burnett (2), Wells (8)
ME(r): Ortiz
ME(f): Youkilis, Scutaro (4), Rios (6)