It was fitting that Wednesday night's game officially ended on a 5-4-3 double play, because it unofficially ended in the 4th inning when Mark Teahen botched what should have been an inning ending double play.
John Danks was tasked with facing the Tigers on short rest thanks to Saturday's double-header in what seemed like a favorable matchup with Jeremy Bonderman. That matchup only got rosier when Miguel Cabrera and Johnny Damon were held out. Unfortunately, outside of Omar Vizquel the Sox offense wasn't up to the task of touching Bonderman.
Vizquel took Bonderman deep -- 1st row deep -- in the top of the 4th to provide the Sox lone offensive highlight. The Sox lead was short-lived, however, as Teahen's second throwing error of the game opened the floodgates in the bottom half. Danks wasn't exactly stellar after the error allowing a single, double and two walks (one intentional), and you can't assume the double play, but it's a play that has to be made.
If Alexei Ramirez makes a bad error like that, you have to just eat it and move on. But when Mark Teahen makes that error, his second in less than 30 minutes, after a season of proving every defensive metric right (he can't play defense), it's time to get him out of the lineup. There's no way he can make up for his play in the field with his league-average bat. Putting him in the lineup is a net-negative, every time.
I have no doubt that Ozzie will pull Teahen tomorrow when he still has to cover for the loss of Gordon Beckham, the question is 'how?' I suspect it will be by shifting Vizquel to 3B and inserting Brent Lillibridge in place of Beckham's customary locale. I'm all for swinging for the fences and throwing the kid with 1 major league at-bat at the hot corner. Ozzie's been using all his bullets from the pen so far in September, why not do the same with the lineup?
Teahen wouldn't be such a headache if he was only around for this season. Heck, he might already be gone if that was the case. But with 2 more years at $10+M, he's the Scott Linebrink of the offense. He makes too much money for anyone to want to deal with his shortcomings, and his salary will be just enough that we keep trying find someplace to get "value" out of him (read: where he can do the least damage). Unfortunately, that probably means at least another year of him getting reps in RF, where the Sox would be best served picking up a plus-offensive player while shifting Q! to DH.
And since we always complain when the Sox take a long time to lose, this one came in at a tidy 2:04, a humane euthanization. As for the Sox playoff hopes, they appear to be taking a swift kick in the nuts, as the Twins just broke up a Zach Greinke no-hitter to take a 3-1 lead.