The Sox come home from a successful road trip to face the D-Backs tonight. Rowand's three run homer in the tenth yesterday helped soothe my pain after staying up late to watch Hermanson blow his first save as Sox lost 2-1 on Saturday night.
Everyone knows what happened, so I won't recap. But I will add my to voice to all the other Sox fans who cannot believe Guillen let Mark Buerhle bat with no outs, runners on the corners, in the 8th inning of an one run game!
But hey, the way the Padres were teeing off on Hermanson in the 9th, I doubt that would have stopped scoring at 2 runs anyway (at least that's what I was telling myself as I was trying to sleep after the game).
While it certainly has been frustrating watching Ozzieball the past 200+ games, I've come to the realization that the in- game tactics of a major league manager just aren't that important (at least in a 162 game season). It might cost a team a few games over a full season, but getting the team to play each and every day to its fullest potential is the hallmark of a great manager.
For crying out loud, Guillen's not even as bad as Dusty on the North Side, yet Baker continues to have his teams in the playoff hunt every year!
Anyway, the fact that the Sox have led in all but 4 games this year is a sign that the Sox come ready to play. And the amazing thing is, even though thay have baseball's best record, it's not that hard to imagine them with something like a 47-15 record instead of 42-20. The fact they have led in all but 4 games also means that they have blown 16 leads!