Frustration Begins to Mount as Miscues Cost Red Sox Two Wins

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Apr 18, 2010

Frustration Begins to Mount as Miscues Cost Red Sox Two Wins There were critical questions being asked of the Red Sox in the middle of the week. People were wondering what was wrong. Why the slow start? Is 2010 really just a bridge to a better future?

The inquiries were premature, for sure. After all, the Sox were a .500 team and about to come home for a 10-game homestand. While some fans were frustrated, the club showed none of it.

However, three days of horrible baseball, horrible weather and horrible results can change a team in a heartbeat. Frustration was evident following a Saturday night at Fenway Park which saw Boston lose the resumption of Friday night's suspended game and then the originally scheduled contest, both in hard-to-take fashion.

"We've got to come back tomorrow morning and we’ve got to play a lot better cause we're throwing games away," said Dustin Pedroia, who had a two-run homer in a 6-5 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays in the nightcap. "We should be winning these games instead of throwing them away."

While the season is young, April 17 has already been established as a day to remember, not just because the Sox lost twice, but more so because of how they lost. It also might go down as the day they had their first dose of real concern for the future.

"You gotta play good. You gotta hit the ball good. You gotta play good defense. You gotta pitch good," Pedroia said. "If you don't start doing that, we ain't gonna be good. We ain't gonna be a playoff team, I'll tell you that.

"We've got teams that want to kick our [behinds] so we better come out and play better."

Certainly the play exhibited Saturday won't do.

Shortly after the suspended game resumed, the Red Sox found themselves with the bases loaded and nobody out in the bottom of the 11th inning. A fly ball would give a sparsely settled crowd a thrilling appetizer for the main course set to come a little later.

That fly never came. Instead, David Ortiz grounded into a force at home and Adrian Beltre followed suit with a 5-3 double play that took the wind out of the Sox’ sails. Shortly thereafter, Tampa Bay designated hitter Pat Burrell was rounding the bases after smacking a go-ahead two-run homer and minutes after that a 3-1 Rays win was in the books.

Boston had almost an hour to change jerseys and regroup for the second game. The tone, however, didn't change a bit.

With runners on the corners and two outs in the first inning, a line drive straight at center fielder Mike Cameron somehow glanced off his glove, allowing one run to score and opening the door for three more unearned runs to come in on a double by Burrell.

"That ball seemed like the turning point of the whole game," said Cameron, who indicated the ball sliced on him at the last second but offered no excuses. "It interrupted [Clay Buchholz] a little bit…Turns out that was a big, big, big error."

So, too, was the next one.

Marco Scutaro, like Cameron acquired for his glove, committed his team-high third error on a B.J. Upton chopper in the sixth. Upton stole second, moved to third on a wild pitch and scored on a double by little-known catcher John Jaso.

On a night that brought on many boos, that may have elicited the loudest round.

That made six errors in three games, as well as a handful of misplays that were ruled as hits for the opposition. It wasn’t what the club had forecast back in Fort Myers.

"We talked all spring about how good we were gonna be defensively and we’ve not done that consistently yet," manager Terry Francona said. "And when we don't, we gotta pick each other up. It seems like right now we're making an error, those runs score."

Francona had to resort to finding positives in short relief outings by Daniel Bard in the conclusion of the suspended game and Ramon Ramirez in the second game. There was not much to look favorably upon.

First baseman Kevin Youkilis echoed that struggle.

"Everything," he said when asked what the team needs to improve. "We've got to do everything better."

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