Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Live Blog 11: Papelbon shaky for Boston


And that's a wrap.

Baseball's Opening Day - Japanese style - is in the books with a 6-5, extra-inning Red Sox victory over the A's.

Jonathan Papelbon, a consensus top 1 or 2 closer in almost every fantasy draft, did his best to make things exciting in the 10th.

After walking Daric Barton to start the inning and fanning all-or-nothing Jack Cust, Papelbon gave up an Emil Brown double that scored Barton to make it 6-5 Boston, but Brown was gunned down, trying to stretch it to a triple.

Brown's mental mistake was doubly painful as Bobby Crosby and Jack Hannahan followed with singles before Suzuki grounded out to first to end the rally.

For Papelbon owners, it's hard to get uptight with this one subpar inning. Sure, a 4.00 WHIP is not ideal for starters, but Pap may have been suffering sleep deprivation for all we know, with the extreme time change and jet lag. And he still recorded the save and was hit with just 1 earned run.

Manny Ramirez finished with 4 RBI, and is now on pace for 600+, just as Oakland C Suzuki is on pace for 120 SB. Basically, take what you want away from this opener, which despite the Matsuzaka and Okajima appearances, was still far bigger in the United States than in Japan.

When the game went to extra innings, the local Tokyo television station reportedly cut away to the regularly-scheduled game show.

Sayonara.

And let the season begin.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That was fun. Are you going to give us a play by play for every MLB game this year?

Trevor Freeze said...

ha! thanks, adam r., but unfortunately, this was just an opening-day special. i will be doing live-blogging for the Monday, March 31 opening day, from 1 p.m. to 5 or 6 p.m.

Anonymous said...

That's so exciting, T-Rev! I'm looking forward to it and will check in lots.
-A.