Sail away, sail away, sail away

So there I sat, watching the bottom of the sixth inning of another late-night Red Sox game. Julian Tavarez had come into the game to relieve Jon Lester and the Sox were clinging to a 5-3 lead. Tavarez loaded the bases with one out, and he got a ground ball. The Sox barely missed turning the double play. Tavarez began jumping around angrily. If I was that first-base ump, I would have seriously worried that I was about to get kicked in the head by a nutjob wearing what can only be described as his Skeletor face.

A run came in the back door from third, and the only thing I could think was “here we go again.” Actually, the pain of the last seven days has been so unremitting that the thought only made it as far as “here urghrohhhhh….” But then Tavarez escaped further damage in the inning, and up popped a commercial that I’d never seen on NESN before. It was an ad for a pay-per-view movie. I don’t know if I’m getting the name right, but it was something like “Wild Party Girls: Naked Boat Bash.” I was all set to be intrigued- um, I mean appalled at the nerve of the NESN people to advertise that smut during a family broadcast of the Sox game. What were they thinking? And then I looked over at the clock. 12:28 a.m. No one that’s got their head screwed on right is watching TV right now. Only insomniacs and completely insane Red Sox fans. I think there’s a good deal of overlap in those two demographics.

Why am I up at this hour watching this game? What the hell do I expect to see? As I type this, it’s now the bottom of the 7th, and Timlin just gave up a leadoff double to Orlando Cabrera. The tying run is on with nobody out. This is nuts, what I’m putting myself through just to hopefully see a win out of this team. I can guarantee you that a Naked Boat Bash would be a heck of a lot more satisfactory right now.

Jon Lester only made it through five innings again tonight. The bullpen will need to pick up at least four innings, after picking up four innings last night. Since at least the All-Star break, fully 60% of the starting pitchers have been unable to get their sorry butts into the sixth inning. Combine this with the reliance on a young bullpen of Hansen, Delcarmen and Papelbon, an old guy (Timlin) who started his season too early in the World Baseball Classic, and you have a pitching staff not only hitting the wall in August, but getting driven into the wall at high speed in a vehicle driven by your failing starters.

In sports medicine, there’s a concept called “cascading injuries.” A pitcher injures his toe, which causes him to land on his foot differently, which messes with his knee and hip. As those joints begin to hurt, he changes his arm slot and delivery, and ends up blowing out his shoulder or elbow.

I think that the Red Sox pitching has had a cascading injury. The big toe in this case is Tim Wakefield. I know the reasons for the fate of a baseball team are hazy and difficult to pin down exactly, but my own theory is that Wakefield was the proverbial butterfly that caused the hurricane. Wake, one of my favorite guys, was pitching well. He was the most consistent, reliable starter we had going. Even when he’s not on, he’s a lock for league average pitching, 4.5 ERA or so. More importantly, he was a lock for at least seven innings. He saved the bullpen so many times- this has been blatantly obvious since game three of the 2004 ALCS- the 19-8 slaughter by the Yankees. When Wake pitched, even if the Sox lost, everyone in the bullpen got a night off.

Since he went down, and Jason Varitek with him, the staff has had major problems. The bullpen has struggled big time, and not enough of the starters have given them enough time off. I know that Wake’s not responsible for Lester throwing 20 pitches an inning or Jason Johnson getting lit up or Josh Beckett giving up 475 home runs. But more often than not, the Sox offense has kept us in most games through five or six innings. The bullpen can’t hold on anymore. Come back Wake! It’s just a damn cracked rib. Take one for the team.

Meanwhile, here we are, bottom of the eighth and the Sox are still hanging in there. I’m blogging this live, though I’ll probably have to wait to post it because my dial-up connection is spotty. The bullpen is either going to prove my theory again tonight or I’ll have chosen yet another topic that’s inappropriate the moment I finish typing it.

Don’t look now, but here comes Keith Foulke, striking out the leadoff guy in the 8th. I didn’t realize how much we missed that surly, slow-pitch guy. If he’s healthy and effective (after being the poster child for cascading injuries- starting in his knees and ending deep in his head), this could be a huge boost.

Ok. Game's over- a solid 4-out save for Papelbon. The end of a long losing street. The end of a long night. Time for all good people to go to bed and get some rest for work tomorrow. Why, then, do I feel like staying awake and getting on a boat?