Here's some heady stuff for you. The Sox have won 5 more games than any other team in baseball. It's only May 14th as I type this and the Sox sit 18 games above .500. No team reached 18 games above .500 last season until the second week in June. I really don't even know where to begin anymore when trying to capture the run the palehose have been on to start the season.
Mark Buehrle was, well, Mark Buehrle Friday night. The Orioles tried to break his rhythm by stepping out of the box and taking a lot of time between pitches, but Buehrle was unfazed. The only thing that seemed to get to Buehrle was in the 4th inning when he simultaneously lost his control for a few batters at the same time that home plate umpire Sam Holbrook decided to change the strike zone. The result was a 3-run inning, all of the runs coming with two outs.
To his credit, Holbrook's zone was consistent for both teams, and the Sox were able to get to Rodrigo Lopez because of it. Lopez only walked one, but after the 4th, he was having a much harder time finding the zone. Not counting balls put into play, Lopez threw just 10 of 26 pitches for strikes after the 4th. The only player he even took to a two strike count was Jermaine Dye, who eventually struck out. That's right, mark it on your calendars... patience won the Sox this game. Timely hitting only helped.
Willie Harris made his first start since being put on the bereavement list about a week ago. He came through in a big way, with a single back up the middle to put the Sox just one run back with three to play.
If you asked me to try a come up with a reason why the Sox have been able to run up such a ridiculous number of victories so quickly, I could just point to Paul Konerko's at-bat in the 7th as a microcosm of the season. Here's Konerko, a guy who's flirting with the Mendoza line, mired in a 5-44 slump,and falling behind in the count, with the game winning hit. Even the way he got the hit was a microcosm; an ugly little broken bat 2-run single to short center. The Sox may not get a lot of production from guys, but they're making sure their production counts this season.
Link Dump
- I know there's some of you out there who write your own baseball blogs, so I thought I would point this out to you. Sean Forman, one of the driving forces behind Baseball-reference.com, has come up with a script that automatically links to players' pages on BB-Ref. It's really slick. I already tried it with the stuff above the fold. -- Check it out
- There were a couple of new additions to the SportsBlogs line up in the past couple days. Viva el Birdos is a Cardinals blog, and Royals Review is an addition to the AL Central section of the family.
- Also from the SportsBlogs family, head on over to Camden Chat, and see what the enemy has to say about this series.
- Studes of the Hardball Times pointed me to a neat little baseball graphs site called Pennant Race. I think I'm going to put that link in the sidebar so I don't lose it. I know there was a similar site he linked to before that had some really great comparative features, but I can't find it now.
- I knew my drinking water tasted funny.
- Surfing the blogoshpere just now, I've only just now come to the conclusion that I'm a complete loser.
I surfed to 3 different sites by clicking random links on peoples sidebars, and all of them had comments on the Amazing Race finale. At first I felt sorry for them, but then I realized that those blogs are probably much higher trafficked than this one, and blogging Realilty TV isn't really that different from bloggin baseball. I wonder what Rob & Amber's VORC (Value Over Replacement Contestant) is.
The only thing worse than watching reality TV is reading about it on every Tom, Dick, & Harry's blog. I, of course, realize that the people who frequent those blogs probably have nothing but contempt for baseball, that pre-empts their "reality," and the blogs that cover them.