The Sox just won their 5th game of spring training. Woo-hoo! Some notes from the game.
- Hideo Nomo looked like Hideo Nomo, which is to say all used up.
- Tyler Lumsden, who I've tagged as one of my breakout prospects, got his first taste of big league camp and was very impressive in the process. I think the gun may have been a little fast on him, but he was touching 95 with his fastball, while locating it well. His curveball suffered a little bit from the Arizona air, flattening out a few times. But he also used a nasty one to get himself out of a jam. He looked better than most of the LOOGY candidates we've brought in this year.
- Bobby Jenks and Brandon McCarthy both had control problems today. I was especially interested in McCarthy's outing because it was his first on very short rest, like he'll be asked to do out of the bullpen. For that reason, I'll give him a bit of a pass on the control issues. I was watching his velocity and movement more than anything, and those were still there. He was falling behind every batter he faced, however, and gave up a bomb to Dougy Alphabet on a poorly located 1-0 fastball.
- Cliff Politte is finally starting to look comfortable on the mound.
- At the plate, Brian Anderson stroked a triple in to the left field corner off of Amborix Burgos, and Ross Gload smashed a double deep of the center field wall.
"Matt and Coop will get together immediately on getting him in the strike zone more, similar to how Coop worked with Bobby Jenks and Damaso Marte before that," Williams said. "If not for my confidence in Don Cooper, then certainly you can't consider these kind of things."
It also appears as if the Sox will go with three lefties, one of which has 5 innings pitched above A-ball, and another who hasn't been able to find the zone in 7+ years of professional baseball, and Hermanson on the DL.
"That's one scenario, and probably the leading scenario right now," Williams said. "With each day that goes by and each time I hear Dustin Hermanson talk about retirement and injury and getting through the season ... it just makes me think that we may need to start him on the disabled list at the very least to insure that mentally and physically he's ultimately ready to compete at the level in which we all saw him compete last year. This may require more discussion, but that's where we are right now."