cuz i can't resist

i'm not faulting tito because this is a team of sufficient flaws to have missed the playoffs under most other management. no worries. however:

we all saw how beckett was getting rocked. madden took his whipping boy out. josh shouldn't have been there in the first place to put those two guys on in the fifth. (and it wasn't like those were cheap hits, either). that alone would have given the sox the game. however:

the rays spent their pen trying to hold off the olde towne team in the 5th, 6th and 7th, and more should have been done to exploit the fact that they only had two arms left in their pen after wheeler did his three, and both of them were not their best, to say the least. so why doesn't pap take the mound after 1 1/3 and try to wear them out?. even letting that go, and letting timlin do his best, it still doesn't answer the question as to why, when it was easily observed that timlin didn't have his best, that there wasn't more effort made to find a good matchup out of all those arms on the sox bench, and do whatever it took to get the outs needed to survive that last rally. no question the matchups favored the sox the whole rest of the way. (which is another nod to tito's managing, but, hey, you still have to do everything you can to win.

congrats to the rays, because that win was THE ONE. go back to boston down 2-0, and it's over. go back 1-1, and you get your chance to steal one and bring it home again, and anything can happen. either way you look at it, it's a tough one not to win.

i guess the franconaman doesn't have the faith in byrd to put him out there like conventional wisdom might have you try. i'm not saying tito doesn't know better than we do, but it sure would have been nice to sneak out of tampa with 2 wins instead of one...

greedy, yeah.

looking forward to wake on tuesday!!!