Checking In

So a couple Celtics stories and half my readership leaves. The NBA is hated that bad? I had no idea. My highest days were doing Celtics columns. Oh well.

Let’s talk about the Sox. It seems like forever since we have. I mean sure I dumped on Matzucrappa for a couple weeks but really hadn’t focused on the rest of the team. Whipping boy David Ortiz has started to turn his game on in the last few weeks. He’s up to .220 from .185 at the end of May. In fact Papi is hitting .319 in the month of June with seven home runs. Hopefully the weather will warm up soon and his bat continues to heat up.

My whipping boy from last year, the Captain, Jason Varitek is hitting .235 and has 11 home runs on the season. A .250 April followed by a .230 May and a .200 June doesn’t give you much confidence for the rest of the year but it’s OK with George Kottaras heating up. Kottaras has actually hit .273 for June, considering he’s only playing typically every 5th day, that’s pretty good.

Sure the team only managed two runs in their last two games but they won one of those 1-0 and they lost 2-1 in the other. Their pitching is still the key to the team and despite a bad outing against the Nationals, I’m convinced Smoltz still has gas in the tank to help this team down the stretch.

The Sox don’t go West for the rest of the season so that eliminates a lot of the travel they’d typically have remaining on the schedule (think West cost trip post All Star game, every year). They have a series in Baltimore starting tonight and then they’re home against Seattle, Oakland and Kansas City. They could easily go undefeated in their next 13 games but I think 10-3 is realistic. That would put them at 56-32 heading into the All Star Break. Not bad at all.

But this guy checking himself for stink; he still stinks and may be on his way out of town.