Dice-K Emerges From the Shadow of Big Papi

Only this time, it’s not a shadow that one would want to emerge from. Big Papi’s ‘slump’ appears to have been a thing of the past, leaving Dice-K bare-ass naked right now. Yes, I know he’s won 36 games including the post-season in the past 2 years; and yes, I know the Sox have invested over $100m in the guy. But right now, ya can’t trade him, ya can’t send him to Pawtucket, and ya can’t send him to the bullpen. DL? That certainly won’t go over well with DK. About the only thing you can do is cross your fingers, send him out to the mound, and hope to hell he finally breaks out of it.

Tonight, he didn’t. His line is once more ugly as sin: 4 IP, 8 H’s, 6 ER’s, 4 BB’s, 2 K’s, 1 HR allowed, leaving him 1-5, with a Wang-like 8.23 ERA. All this on only 67 pitches. Usually Sox give him plenty of run support, (usually not enough), but their bats were unusually quiet tonight- 2 hits, that was it. Jason Bay clubbed his 18^th HR of the year, but outside of that, they pretty much e-mailed in their AB’s. The left side of the diamond coughed up another E, this time it was Mike Lowell. (OUCH! It hurts to just even write that!)

Theo and Tito gave Papi over 2 months to get past his slump and their patience has paid off. He’s swinging the bat much better these days. Dice-K did spend some time on the DL, so he still has just a little bit of time left before the FO pulls the trigger on some sort of action regarding him. What that action is remains to be seen, but I’m sure glad I don’t have to decide what to do with all those arms.

Sox Lose 8-2 BOX SCORE

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Braves	2	0	0	2	2	0	1	0	1	8	11	1
Red Sox	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	2	2	1