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Tonight's Red Sox lineup vs. Oakland

Ellsbury rf
Pedroia 2b
Ortiz dh
Ramirez lf
Lowell 3b
Youkilis 3b
Varitek c
Crisp cf
Lugo ss
Matsuzaka p

Posted by Chris Venditto  at 7:55 PM | Permalink

Manny's Macy's ad

As Art Martone reported on this blog earlier today, Manny Ramirez is one of 15 major league players and managers who will appear on ads for Macy's as a Father's Day promo. The others include Joe Torre, Mariano Rivera and 2004 ALCS hero Dave Roberts. Click here to read the full story in the Sports Business Journal.

Posted by Mike McDermott  at 3:56 PM to Projo Mannybeingmanny | Permalink

Multimedia: Projo SoxTalk with Sean McAdam, from Oakland

Click the play button below to hear Sean's comments, recorded this morning. He discusses the the Red Sox' challenges in the month of April, Clay Buchholz's tenuous hold on the fifth starter job, and J.D. Drew's health questions.

Posted by Mike McDermott  at 3:41 PM to Projo SoxTalk with Sean McAdam | Permalink

Red Sox vs. A's key stats

-The Red Sox have opened their season away from Fenway Park in six consecutive seasons, including this year.
-Boston was 1-3 last season at McAfee Coliseum. Since 2005, they are 4-9 in Oakland.

Red Sox vs. Joe Blanton
-Manny Ramirez, 9 for 15 (.600), 2B, 2 BB
-Dustin Pedroia, 3 for 8 (.375), 2 2B, BB
-David Ortiz, 5 for 15 (.333), HR, 2 BB
-J.D. Drew, 3 for 9 (.333)
-Mike Lowell, 4 for 14 (.286), BB
-Julio Lugo, 6 for 23 (.261), 2 2B
-Jason Varitek, 4 for 16 (.250), 2B, BB
-Kevin Youkilis, 3 for 12 (.250), 3 BB
-Jacoby Ellsbury, 1 for 5 (.200)
-Coco Crisp, 2 for 12 (.167), 2B, BB
-Sean Casey, 0 for 4, BB
-Alex Cora, 0 for 3
Blanton is 2-1 with a 3.76 E.R.A. in six career starts against the Red Sox.

A's vs. Daisuke Matsuzaka
-Kurt Suzuki, 1 for 2 (.500)
-Mark Ellis, 2 for 6 (.333), HR, BB
-Emil Brown, 1 for 5 (.200), BB
-Travis Buck, 1 for 7 (.143)
-Daric Barton, 0 for 1, 2 BB
-Jack Cust, 0 for 1, BB
-Jack Hannahan, 0 for 1, BB
-Rob Sweeney, 0 for 2
-Dan Johnson, 0 for 3
-Bobby Crosby, 0 for 5
Matsuzaka is 0-1 with a 3.00 E.R.A. in two career starts against Oakland.

Posted by Mike McDermott  at 3:15 PM to Projo Sox Streakers | Permalink

Baseball Today: Tuesday, April 1

Journal photo / Bob Breidenbach

TAKE TWO: Didn't we do this last week?

Well, yes. But, as Sean McAdam writes, tonight the Red Sox will play a game of consequence in the continental United States for the first time since Oct. 28 in Denver when they re-open the season in Oakland. It still doesn't feel right -- one season opener at 6 a.m., this one at 10:15 p.m. -- but it's a step closer to the normalcy of the season, a normalcy that's eluded us so far this spring. Even so, these games count just as much as the Wednesday night games against Baltimore in July, and McAdam lists the questions facing the Sox as the season (re)starts. It'll be Daisuke Matsuzaka back on the mound tonight, seeking some of the pitch-count efficiency that eluded him in Opener One. (projo.com)

GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT: Yesterday, you may recall, we linked to a Wall Street Journal statistical analysis that ranked Terry Francona 16th of the 20 managers listed. I made no comment on it, mainly because I thought the study was horribly flawed. (I only linked to it because I thought it was interesting. Not accurate, but interesting.) The flaw: Any system that spits out a conclusion showing a manager who's won two World Series in four years -- in a place where they hadn't won any World Series in the previous eight decades, a place where the pressure to win was all but suffocating, and with a team that, while very good, wasn't really head-and-shoulders better than some other teams -- to be in the lower quarter of all his peers, is clearly (clearly!) focusing on the wrong data.

And toward that end may I present Bill Reynolds' column on Michael Holley's excellent new book Red Sox Rule. Managing, writes Holley, isn't about writing out lineups or when to pull pitchers or whether or not to call for the hit-and-run, even though, says Reynolds, these are the things "that’s the fodder of talk shows and the morning newspaper." (And, perhaps most importantly, the Internet; I'll give Bill a pass on this one, since he's past the age where he's online-savvy.) It's about "managing people, no easy task in this age of huge salaries and guaranteed contracts, this age of agents and entitlement, this age of people who question anything anyone says, never mind someone who controls their fate." Francona's brilliant -- brilliant -- at that part of the gig. And that's the part the WSJ study completely ignored.

World Series championships aren't the be-all, end-all of a manager's competency -- Cito Gaston is living proof -- and I wouldn't want my defense of Francona to boil down to "He has two rings, doesn't he?" But WSJ was trying to take all subjective measures out of the analysis and focus directly on whether or not the team performs better or worse under each manager. Watching Francona handle this team over the last four years -- particularly last September, when he stood up to mounting hysteria as the lead over the Yankees dwindled and continued to do the things that best positioned the team for the postseason, a strategy that paid off as the Sox played their best baseball of the year in October -- convinces me that any study showing he's costing the team games isn't capturing the whole picture.

You can have Ron Gardenhire, Bruce Bochy and Ned Yost (who were 1-2-3 in the WSJ study). I'm sure they're fine managers. But I'll take Terry Francona, thank you.

QUICK HITS: McAdam reports J.D. Drew won't play tonight, but probably will tomorrow . . . all indications are Bobby Kielty is sticking with the Sox . . . Mike Timlin has been cleared to begin long tossing and may soon start a rehab assignment with the PawSox.

THE FAVORED ONES: The Globe's Gordon Edes checks out the various preseason prognostications and concludes if "the American League East could be decided like the Iowa caucus instead of on the field, there is little doubt who would win."

WE AGREE: All three of our baseball writers -- McAdam, Steven Krasner and Joe McDonald -- think the Sox will take the A.L. East and McAdam and McDonald also believe they'll repeat as World Series champions. (projo.com)

STATE OF BIG PAPI: David Ortiz discusses a number of topics, including his surgically repaired knee ("It feels good one day and some other day it feels like [expletive]") with the Globe's Nick Cafardo.

BIRTH OF A SALESMAN: Manny Ramirez will participate in a summer sportswear promotion for Macy’s. (Boston Herald)

AND THE WINNER IS . . . . Well, there's no winner just yet. But David Scott says a former Miss San Diego, Heidi Watney, has emerged as the front-runner to replace Tina Cervasio as NESN's Red Sox reporter. (shots.bostonsportsmedia.com)

THE ANSWER MAN: The very first of Jonah Keri's "One hundred stories to watch" is "Can the Red Sox repeat?" He doesn't think so. (espn.com)

SECOND CITY: FoxSports.com has the Sox ranked second, behind Cleveland, in its first Power Rankings of the regular season.

YANKEES 1, RED SOX 0: The first Boston-New York meeting of the year -- in a wine-tasting contest -- goes to the Yanks. (New York Daily News)

HOW TOUGH IS IT TO FIGURE THIS OUT? The Yankee opener was rained out, leading Johnny Damon to wonder aloud why the season openers aren't all played in warm-weather cities or places with domes. (New York Post)

I'LL ALWAYS HEAR YOUR VOICE: Bob Sheppard will be announcing Derek Jeter's at-bats at Yankee Stadium all season long, no matter if Sheppard returns to work or not. That's because Jeter had one of Sheppard's introductions taped, and the Yankees will play it whenever he goes to the plate. (mlb.com)

OH NO, YOU DON'T: The Yankees are forbidding Joba Chamberlain to make a weekly radio appearance on Michael Kay's show. Club policy, they say. (Newsday)

SAY WHAT? For the first time since I've known him, my friend Lou DiLullo isn't picking the Yankees to win the A.L. East. (yankeetradition.com)

RELIVING A NIGHTMARE: Bottom of the ninth. 3-0 lead. Eric Gagne in to nail it down. And then the Brewers got a taste of what we in Red Sox Nation saw so often last August and September. (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) Still, they did come back to win it in the 10th . . . and Gagne wound up with the victory.

JUST STARTING ONE: Kerry Wood was no better than Gagne as he started his stint as Cubs' closer in the same game. (Chicago Tribune) And Kosuke Fukudome -- whose three-run, game-tying homer off Gagne sent Wrigley Field into a frenzy -- may be embarking on the nightmare that is Cubdom, according to the Chicago Sun-Times' Jay Mariotti.

OPENING WAY: One debut that went far smoother was Johan Santana's with the Mets. ESPN.com's Jayson Stark calls Santana "the perfect cure for the 6-month-old nightmare that won't go away. . . a dose of amnesia for a team that's trying to perfect the art of forgetfulness." Fellow Venezuelan native Dave Concepcion, the star shortstop on Cincinnati's Big Red Machine of the 1970s, flew up to watch Santana pitch. (mlb.com)

LONG, HOT SUMMER: The Baltimore Sun's Peter Schmuck notes the thousands of fans who came to Camden Yards yesterday disguised as empty seats and wonders "how does that auger for the dog days of August, when there's no orange carpet and the Yankees and Red Sox are playing elsewhere?"

NO ORDINARY JOE: Joe Torre admitted to having a case of the nerves prior to his Dodger managerial debut. (Los Angeles Times) ESPN.com's Jim Caple chronciles his first day -- and victory -- as Dodger manager.

ONE MAN'S CEILING . . . Barry Zito, the losing pitcher against Torre's Dodgers, continues to look like the biggest free-agent bust of this generation. The San Francisco Chronicle's Gwen Knapp buries him after yesterday's performance.

IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW YOU GET THERE: The Pirates blew a 9-4 lead in the bottom of the ninth inning, but still managed to pull out a 12-11 win over the Braves. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) It spoiled the return to Atlanta of Tom Glavine, who left after five innings with a lead. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

YIN AND YANG: The Tigers hit as advertised in their opener against the Royals. (Detroit Free Press) But they also pitched as advertised, as well. (Detroit News) As a result, they're 0-1 in this new season. (Kansas City Star)

A DIFFERENT WORLD: Most places -- this one included -- react harshly to players who leave for the riches of free agency. But Minnesota is gentler, kinder, and folks there had a warm welcome for Torii Hunter when he returned to town with the Angels last night. (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

LAW OF THE LAND: The blog The Big Lead has an interesting interview with ESPN's Keith Law, who says, among other things, that the Blue Jays -- for whom he was working when the deal was completed -- negotiated a terrible contract with A.J. Burnett ("a two-year player option, and I don’t see why any club would ever give a player an option like that . . . [you're] ceding your upside to the player and locking in your downside") and that baseball's real fans don't care about performance-enhancing drugs. ("The fans who are most up in arms over PED usage are bandwagon fans -- they didn’t care much about baseball, but they jumped on the train to complain about it, and when it’s over, they’ll disappear again.")

STILL WATERS RUN DEEP: A profile of Charlie Manuel in phillymag.com shows there's more to the Phillies manager than meets the eye.

CATCH UP WITH US SOMETIME: As the mainstream baseball press and fandom comes to grips with such terms as OPS, A's general manager Billy Beane tells the San Diego Union-Tribune's Chris Jenkins just how far beyond those primitive sabermetric concepts most baseball front offices have progressed.

HERE AND THERE: Scott Spiezio has signed a minor-league contract with the Braves (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) . . . Orioles fans haven't forgotten the nitwit comments made by Aubrey Huff on a Baltimore radio show last November, and they let him have it yesterday (Baltimore Sun) . . . Carlos Zambrano says he's okay after cramps forced him out of yesterday's game against the Cubs, though he was hardly Little Mary Sunshine in his one-minute postgame media session (Chicago Sun-Times) . . . The Pirates may have hit an insurmountable snag in their long-term contract talks with Adam LaRoche (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) . . . The Yankees have issued uniform number 21 for the first time since Paul O'Neill retired. LaTroy Hawkins is wearing it, and he chose it to honor Roberto Clemente. (New York Daily News)

-- ART MARTONE

Posted by Art Martone  at 6:30 AM | Permalink