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April 7, 2008

Projo SoxTalk with McAdam: Tired in Toronto

Click the play button below to hear Sean's comments, recorded this morning. He discusses the Red Sox' sorry showing in Toronto as well as the coming series with the 0-6 Detroit Tigers.

Here are some excerpts from Sean's comments:

On the team's travel fatigue: "I think it was inevitable that it would catch up with them at some point. I think the combination of a pretty good team to beat, and maybe the Red Sox sort of collectively hitting the wall right before they got home, combined to result in those three losses."

On Josh Beckett "It's worth remembering that Beckett did not have a traditional spring training. He faced a college team in his first actual start down in Fort Myers at the end of February, and then when he took the mound the next time, that's when the back spasms happened, and he had to scratch himself from what would have been his first real Grapefruit League start. And then everything after that was either in a camp game, a simulated game, a minor-league game -- he never really faced major-league hitters. ... So they understood that he was not going to be at 100 percent [yesterday]. He hadn't maxed out on his arm strength or thrown as many pitches as he normally would have before facing major-league hitters in a regular-season game. So I think that's the explanation for tiring in the fifth inning and having some difficulty, and that resulted in leaving the bases loaded, and things unraveled after that."

On the bullpen: "One of the things I thought was interesting was that you have the fifth inning yesterday, which is hardly the time when you would ordinarily bring in one of your power setup guys that might otherwise be used in the seventh or eighth, and Terry Francona felt compelled to go to him in the fifth. To me that spoke to some issues about perhaps not having a lot of faith right now in the middle guys, and sort of having to use a guy like that far earlier in the game than you might otherwise do."

On the Tigers: "They're not 100-percent healthy ... they're without both Gary Sheffield and Curtis Granderson, so that affects that lineup that everyone knows is going to be pretty fearsome when it gets clicking. And it just seems like they came out of the gate and had everything bad happen to them at once. Bullpen blew a couple of games late ... really nothing has gone very well for them."

Posted by Mike McDermott  at 11:26 AM to Red Sox | Permalink

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