At The Ballyard ... with Steve Weissman

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Support Your Local Pitcher

• It took 10 weeks, but the Boston Red Sox last night finally provided some run support for their beleaguered knuckleballer, Tim Wakefield, who coming into the game had an ERA of 3.82 ERA but had only 3.1 runs per game scored on his behalf. Now, if they could only spread their runs across several games instead of batching them into a single contest: THEN we’d be getting somewhere!

• It’s nice to see the BoSox taking my advice and committing to their young hurlers. According to today’s Boston Globe, manager Terry Francona called Manny Delcarmen, Craig Hansen, and Jon Lester (as well as new arrival Javy Lopez) into his office and told them the Sox would like to keep them in Boston uniforms rather than continue to put them on the McCoy-Fenway shuttle. It’s a good decision even if the youngsters struggle, for it’s unlikely they’ll do worse overall than Seanez, Taverez et al., and it will give them the same sort of grounding-by-fire that led to the Tigers’ current pitching successes.

• Brewster Whitecaps pitcher Erik Davis was struck in the eye by a line drive in a Cape League game against the Hyannis Mets on Sunday. Med-flighted directly to Boston for treatment, he was released from Mass General Hospital yesterday, and it appears he will be all right in the end. But his experience does seem to me to be more common than it used to be, and at all levels: David Wells and Matt Clement are just two recent major league examples, while Davis unfortunately followed Harwich’s Tim Lincecum (struck last year) as the subject of target practice on the Cape. One can’t help but wonder why such incidents are becoming more frequent – or is it simply that the reporting is better, so we’re hearing about them more?

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