Oof.

I haven't done a game recap in awhile and I'm not going to start again now but damn, that really sucked.

Matsuzaka should have gotten that win. Yeah, it would have been better if he could have gone deeper into the game so that Francona didn't have to bother with the craptacular bullpen but there's no way this game should have ended up as a win for the Rays. Daisuke did a good job-he held the Rays to one run through five innings but when 2008-Okajima and Javier Lopez are the bright spots of your relief pitching, something is desperately wrong. It was as if someone told Manny Del, Hansen, and Aardsma that the Rays wanted to win the game and they collectively said: Oh! Sorry about that. Here you go.

Maybe in the same way that Cleveland has the bugs and the ex-girlfriend anthem/God Bless America singers (I don't remember which it was), their equivalent of the bullpen cop is secretly a hypnotist and whispers in the relievers ear: Don't throw strikes! Don't throw strikes!

At least they had offense tonight which is definitely an improvement. It mostly came in the form of Dustin Pedroia (who was a single short of the cycle.) I'm not generally one for second-guessing (it's easy to decide something was the wrong move after things have fallen apart) but what was Varitek doing out there to end the game? Had Lowell not been caught stealing, he would undoubtedly have grounded into a double play. You've got Casey sitting on the bench-let him try to score the game winning run on his birthday. If he struck out, it wouldn't be any worse than what you were likely to get from Varitek anyway.

It's the Red Sox of my youth-finding new and creative ways to lose games daily. Oh, how I missed you.