Deteriorate
| Game 100: July 29, 2009 | |||
 Athletics | 8 | W: Brett Anderson (6-8) H: Craig Breslow (9) S: Andrew Bailey (13) | 43-57, 2 game winning streak |
| Red Sox | 6 | L: Brad Penny (7-5) | 58-42, 2 game losing streak |
| Highlights: Eighth inning, two men on, two outs, one run already in and the tying run at the plate. Breslow induced a pop-out to third off David Ortiz’s bat. Wish we could get players like Breslow.... | |||
You know the game isn’t going to go well when the most uplifting moment of the game is Joe Pantoliano visiting the booth in the fourth to talk about clinical depression, alcoholism, and suicide.
Perhaps Pantoliano can stage an intervention for Brad Penny. If the pitcher wasn’t depressed before the game he should have been by the end of the first. Adam Kennedy kicked off the game with a home run off Penny’s first pitch and Oakland’s lineup almost turned over in the opening inning.
While Pantoliano’s at it, set up a session for couples therapy for Rajai Davis and Ryan Sweeney. Right fielder Sweeney didn’t yield to center fielder Davis and Jason Bay’s can of corn dropped to the turf for a three-base error on Sweeney. Bay just barely scored on Mike Lowell’s sac fliner to left.
Despite all the offense the Athletics generated in Fenway (20 run in three games thus far), the team is penultimate in the American League in batting average, 11th in on-base percentage, last in slugging, last in home runs, 12th in runs batted in — basically, for any offense category you can conjure the Oakland club is amongst the worse if not the worst.
“There must be some kind of way out of here,” Jimi Hendrix sang as pitching coach Curt Young visited his young charge Brett Anderson after leading off the sixth with a base on balls to Mike Lowell. The clip is meant to mock visiting pitchers in jams, but with Boston’s recent play I take it to mean some kind of way out of this slump.
“So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”
