The Baseball Desert

Thursday, May 25, 2006

In-Clement

I know he's one of our guys, and unlike a Wells - or even a Foulke, if you want to use the "Johnny from Burger King" thing aganst him - he's neither done nor said anythng potentially upsetting, but Matt Clement is starting to get on my nerves. The main reason would be eight runs on nine hits over 4 1/3 innings, but beyond that, it's his hang-dog expression when he's on the mound. When things begin to go wrong, he looks like a nine-year-old kid out there, and I just want to call his Mom and ask her to come and get him. But after a little while my patience starts to wear thin and I begin t get pissed off. Can he not see that the team - led last night by Manny - is trying to help him out here? It wouldn't take much for me to let the odd bad day slide. If he lost his rag with the umpire or the opposing hitters, à la Randy Johnson / Julian Tavarez, I wouldn't mind so much, but you can almost see him thinking: "Oh - eight runs? Bummer... Gee, I hope there's macaroni and cheese for dinner."

I'm not saying that Clement was the only guilty party last night: Big Papi was 0-for-5 with 4 Ks, striking out with the bases loaded in the eighth, but he's been great so far this season, and at least he gets pissed when things go wrong. I would have liked the win last night, but it wasn't to be. That's OK - it's baseball, and you're not going to win them all, even when you really want to beat the Spankees in your home ballpark. All I'm asking, when I get up in the middle of the night to watch this stuff, is that we show some emotion.

Losing two of three to the Yankees was not an ideal scenario. Focusing and venting our our frustration on the Devil Rays would be a good way to get over that, and Josh Beckett is just the guy to do that.