Red Sox Miss Yet Another Opportunity

Daisuke Matsuzaka was hurling a pretty good game today in Texas through the first six innings, but he was still trailing the game, 1-0. Things went from bad to worse from there.

Matsuzaka went 6.2 innings and yielded 4 runs on 7 hits, striking out 8 and walking 2. Texas erupted for a 4-run 7th inning that broke the game wide open at 5-0. Two of those four runs in the 7th were Dice-K's inherited runners that scored on a homerun blasted by Michael Young on Manny Delcarmen's first relief pitch.

Boston didn't go down quietly, though. In the top of the 8th, they scored three times on an RBI double by Marco Scutaro and a 2-run homer by Darnell McDonald, making the score 5-3. Texas tacked on 2 more in the bottom half, though, and shut down the Sox in the 9th for the 7-3 victory. It is Boston's third loss in its last four games.

Tampa Bay won today and picked up another game to their lead over Boston for the wild card. The Yankees lost to Kansas City, but the Red Sox were unable to gain ground on the division leaders once again. It's beginning to look very disheartening for the rest of this season. All of the optimists -- myself included -- keep wanting to say things will get better. But when? How? I know Pedroia is still out, but other than that, this is pretty much it. This is what we've got for the rest of this season. Is it good enough to get to the playoffs and win in the playoffs? I don't know, but definitely not the way we're playing right now. We're losing games that we should win, and the time to erase those mistakes is quickly running out before our eyes.