Thoughts I thought: Cody Ross powers Red Sox to 3-1 series win over White Sox
Cody Ross had three home-runs during the series against the White Sox, including a walk-off on Thursday night
- Sometimes random guys get into the zone, and that is exactly what Cody Ross did over the final-part of this series. In games 3 and 4, the Boston Red Sox right-fielder had three home-runs and nine RBI including the walk-off home-run on Thursday night which could only be described as “The happiest moment of the 2012 Boston Red Sox season so far”. I think calling it a “surprise” would be the wrong word to describe Cody in these games because we know that he has had the power all season long. He has an OPS of .917 and 16 home-runs so having a power-surge isn’t a “surprise” by any means. It’s just that the story of this series wasn’t really supposed to be the other out-fielder. This series was the return of Carl Crawford and Jacoby Ellsbury to the line-up and they were supposed to be real stories. They both had good series (with Crawford’s arguably being impressive) but it was Cody Ross that stole the show.
- Don’t forget about the Boston pitching this series. The pitching story was Jon Lester’s struggles on Tuesday night, but outside of that game the Red Sox pitching only gave up 3 total runs. Even better was that those 3 runs were spread across the 3 starting pitchers from those games (Aaron Cook, Felix Doubront, Clay Buchholz). Why is this a good thing? Starters pitch more and are more likely and are more likely to give up more runs. The fact that starters in the three Red Sox wins gave up only 3 runs total is pretty good. Even better, the bull-pen didn’t allow a run in those 3 games either. Pretty impressive stuff.
- For more on Jon Lester, read my piece I wrote on Wednesday basically questioning whether Jon Lester is good enough to be a number one starter. There was more about Lester today where he sounds like someone whose confidence is shaken a little bit. Ugh.
- If anyone didn’t think that Kevin Youkilis was going to have one of those “Fuck you” series’, those people don’t really know sports. More concerning was people jumping off the Middlebrooks bandwagon when Youk hit his home-run on Tuesday night. Everyone seems to have forgotten that Youk really had to go because he wasn’t happy anymore. Could you imagine him in that pig-pile after Cody Ross’ home-run? I couldn’t.
- Speaking of that walk-off home-run, that’s the first time I have seen this team legitimately happy all season long. Am I a sucker for thinking this is the home-run that turns around the season?
- Don’t look now, but Adrian Gonzalez may be back to doing Chupacabra thing. He has a 1.501 OPS, 2 HR, and 10 RBI in the past seven days including the game winning home-run in the eighth inning of game 1 of the series. With David Ortiz out, it will be time for Adrian to step up.
- As of 11:08 on Thursday night, the Sox are 10 games back of the Yankees in the American League East and a game back of Detroit for the second wild-card spot. Next up is a three game set against the Toronto Blue Jays at Fenway.
