Daisuke Hopes to Stop the Bleeding

Fasten your seatbelts, folks. This season is going to be a roller coaster. We'll be fortunate to not pull all of our hair out by October.

It's disappointing that a team that has so much hype, while making $160 million combined in salary, is currently 0-4. All of the Red Sox "strengths" look weaker than ever. The starters, to say the least, are shaky. And offensively, for a team that added two of the best players in the game at their respective positions, only Dustin Pedroia has an average over .300. With really no reasoning as to why they have started so poorly, the advice I have to offer is this: Relax.

Yes, every sports station (like, say, ESPN) will pull out these random statistics about how no team since the millennium made the playoffs with a 0-4 record. And then they'll attack the rotation, say that Carl Crawford is too old, suggest that Papelbon be traded, Francona fired, and Pedroia be moved to catcher. Does this sound outlandish? Yes. So just relax.

Since there are 158 games to go, I'm going to suggest that Red Sox Nation hold off on the panic button until further notice.

Daisuke toes the rubber tonight to try and stop this nonsense. I can't believe we are relying on him to stop a 4-game skid, but we are. He looked good in the spring, so we'll see what happens.a