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June 28, 2007
With Sean McAdam getting the morning off, Art Martone and Mike McDermott discuss the state of the team this morning on projo SoxTalk. Click here to listen to the audio file. Among the topics: whether this past road trip was a success or a failure, a great (wasted) performance by Daisuke Matsuzaka, the Yankees' struggles, Mark Teixeira, and the fairly easy stretch coming up for Boston on the schedule.
Here are some excerpts from Art's comments:
On the road ahead: "As sean is going to write for tomorrow, they're about to enter their easiest stretch of the season. This is the weakest part of their schedule: they play 18 of 21 at home. They have a three-game series at Detroit just before the All-Star break, but other than that they're playing Texas, they're playing Toronto, they're playing Kansas City, they're playing Chicago, playing Tampa Bay -- some of the worst teams in baseball. So they really do have a chance to kind of ease up a little bit, get healthy, try to get these problems solved before they get back on the road to Cleveland and Tampa Bay in the middle of July."
Will there be setiment for Matsuzaka making the All-Star team? "There might be. He's got nine wins as it is, and before we always thought, 'He's winning games even though he's not pitching all that well. He's giving up a lot of runs. His E.R.A. is high.' Well, now his E.R.A. is back into the 3s. He's still got the nine wins, which is still one of the best totals in the American League. So yeah, I think he will get some consideration for the All-Star team. The thing that may hurt him, of course, is that Josh Beckett seems like a shoo-in. He might even start the game, and they may not want to take two pitchers from one team, the way the rosters are broken down."
On the Yankees: "They felt they had straightened out the ship back a couple of weeks ago, when they went on that hot streak ... and now they're playing as poorly as they played all through April and May, and I know this concerns them a great deal, as it should, because they really can't put their finger on what's wrong, why Bobby Abreu is slumping [for example]. There are certain problems that they're going to have to face that I don't know if they can fix: the bullpen being one of them, the starting pitching being another."
Posted by Mike McDermott 
at 12:07 PM | Permalink
