Carlos Torres wasn't any good Tuesday night. Anybody could see that, which is why Ozzie had D.J. Carrasco up in the first inning. I was only joking in the gamethread when, after Torres walked the first batter, I said we were going to see a bunch of Carrasco and Daniel Hudson. By the time Torres faced the third batter, nobody was laughing. He had already hung a handful of breaking balls and doesn't have the fastball to throw it by people.
Neither Hudson nor Carrasco was impressive in relief, though both were passable. Hudson didn't show his slider much at all, and relied more heavily on his changeup than in his first outing.
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Hours before the Sox stunk up the diamond yet again, Ozzie was busy stepping in the line of fire:
"I've always said since I got this job I'm never, never scared to blame myself. Who can you blame? The one thing about it is when one country is not running well they don't blame anybody, but they blame the president. Well I am the president of this ballclub. I am the face of this ballclub. We did everything we could, but in the meanwhile I'm the one that penciled those guys in day in and day out, and they have to perform."
"They have to perform, but you have to make them perform," Guillen responded. "They didn't perform good enough for us and we didn't make them perform. When you lose, everything goes wrong. Why not blame just one guy and deal with it? I think I can deal with it. This is my job. When you hire a manager you hire him to take full responsibility. It comes with a chain - from the owner [Jerry Reinsdorf] to [general manager] Kenny [Williams] to me to my coaches to my players to the rest. I take the blame. No one in this town can blame Kenny or Jerry or [assistant GM] Rick Hahn.
"I want to take the blame," he said. "I want to take the full responsibility of it. They gave me a ballclub to compete and I accept that. When I said in April that we had a chance to win this thing, I said it. I didn't see any of the players say it, I said it. And I said it because I thought we would back myself up. It's my responsibility to take it like a man. When we're not playing well, it's my fault.
This is textbook Ozzie. Despite what some may think, he knows he's not going anywhere, so he's willing to take the blame. I get the feeling that he would say the same thing if his job really were on the line, but there's no way to know for sure and I'm not really interested in finding out.