It turns out we didn’t have to worry about the 25-year old rookie who started the game. Or the untested rook who first relieved him.
The real culprit was the strongest member of the strongest bullpen in baseball. He was there to shut one door Sunday and open another for Monday. Instead New England blinked and it was over.
There’s no more apt way to wrap-up a series against the Angels that featured nothing but frustration. Up was down, down was up. The Angels played with the swagger of an accomplished playoff squad, the Red Sox played with the uneasiness of an underdog on the ropes.
And in the end the Red Sox got exactly what they needed from everyone on the pitching staff except for the one person everyone thought was a sure thing.
After all, there were 27 scoreless postseason innings to prove it. But those innings, like the years of postseason domination over the Angels, meant nothing this time around.
Blaming Papelbon for the series defeat, of course, would be asinine. His collapse was simply the final, painful blow in a truncated postseason that nobody saw coming.
The real fault lies with an anemic offense. The Red Sox lost because they packed their bats up three games before their gloves and hats, failing to muster anything resembling an attack in Los Angeles and following with only two inspired innings at home.
That’s the thing – people will look at a six-run performance in Game 3 and assume pitching is to blame. And while the bullpen collapse down the stretch was certainly glaring, so was the fact that Boston managed zero hits between innings four and eight.
Pedroia rung a solid double, Martinez drove him in, and J.D. Drew delivered his annual “just assume this dinger is worth my entire salary” postseason homer, but otherwise the Sox again were handcuffed.
Did Kevin Youkilis even play in this series? The only thing I can recall is a pair of miscues in the field. And where was David Ortiz? Clearly that was a stunt double swatting at pitches like flies throughout the weekend.
Mike Lowell? I think I saw him. Jason Bay? That might have been him.
It was a brutal performance. For 25 of 27 innings, Angels pitching toyed with the Red Sox. Plain, simple and excruciating.
Funny thing is, all the concern going into the playoff focused on the pitching rotation. Was Beckett healthy, could Lester handle No. 1 duties, would Buchholz run and hide in his first postseason start?
As it turns out, Beckett was his usually filthy self for almost seven full innings, Lester made one mistake and one mistake only, and Buchholz acquitted himself quite well until he got rattled in the sixth inning on Sunday.
None of them was perfect. But the fact of the matter is all three pitched well enough to keep the Red Sox in the game, and the offense never provided the boost to fulfill the other end of the bargain. End of story.
And end of story indeed. Though it was merely a first-round series and it wasn’t even close, Sunday’s loss ranks high on my personal list of the most painful defeats I’ve witnessed live.
Not so much because it was at home or because it was a sweep, but because of how quickly it happened. I was already organizing my Monday around that evening’s Game 4 when Papelbon had two strikes and two outs and nobody on base.
Less than 20 minutes later, I was starting blankly at my television screen. Boom – the end.
The end of the baseball season is the ultimate “just like a band-aid” moment for the fans of all the teams that don’t win the title. One hundred and sixty-two regular season games, eight months of pouring over stats and watching avidly and reading recaps and pondering box scores, and in three chilly autumn evenings it all ends.
It’s agonizing.
To be honest, I’m still not sure Sunday’s loss has sunk in yet. I feel like I should be grieving more. Perhaps it happened so fast I still haven’t really processed it. Perhaps I’m just getting older and learning to deal with defeat better. Perhaps two World Series championships in the last five years has made it OK not to lose my mind whenever the season comes to an end.
I don’t know. All I know is that tonight when I go home I’m going to watch the new episode of House and not Game 4 of the ALDS. I’d give almost anything for it to be the other way around.
All I know is I will tune in only infrequently the rest of the way through the playoffs. The Major League Baseball season ended Sunday afternoon as far as I’m concerned.
In the blink of an eye.
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