YES it is
By Jon Mael
It’s certainly panic time for the Sox. Something isn’t working and the issue needs to be addressed. First of all, at the catcher position, Jarrod Saltalamacchia is playing like he’s 50 years old and cannot swing a bat. Meanwhile when Jason Varitek starts, he is much more comfortable behind the plate but cannot hit a lick. When our pitchers are pitching to Varitek, they are much more comfortable and have more success on the mound. Varitek needs to be our every day catcher. Saltalamacchia can play when Dice-K pitches because he’s not going to be comfortable anyway so we might as well give Salty some playing time. At this point, if a team offered us a really nice Gatorade dispenser with a few flavors, I’d probably give up Dice-K to have it. This guy has steadily declined since 2007, in which he had his only good season. Baseball is the ultimate “what have you done for me lately?” sport and at this point I think having multiple flavors of Gatorade dispensed out of one compact machine would be of a bigger benefit to the Sox than retaining Dice-K would be. Other than that the Sox aren’t in terrible shape, except for Carl Crawford being awful so far. John Lackey and Clay Buccholz have been blah at best also. Don’t start talking about trading at the deadline or rebuilding or moving the team just yet. This team is loaded with talent and will find its stride, just give it some time. But for now, it’s definitely time to panic and hope that we turn the ship around fast. We’ve gone from thinking 100 wins to thinking about jumping off the green monster in a matter of weeks.
NO it is not
By Andrew Otovic
At last check, we just completed the month of April, which means there are still five months left in the season. Do not listen to that Ozzie Guillen crap and believe that divisions are won in April. They are not. Just ask the Minnesota Twins about having terrible Aprils and yet managing to still win their division. The team has played really well of late and the starting pitching led the way. Even the bust and putrid Dice-K pitched back-to-back stellar performances. This is a veteran savvy team that just had a rough go of it. As the weather starts to warm up, this team is going to score on teams at will. Adrian Gonzalez has only 1 homerun, which means he has about 39 to go. Carl Crawford has finally started to warm up and not worry about his massive contract and just play baseball. The 2-10 start was nothing but a blur on the beginning of the calendar. If that was a stretch in June or July nobody would have cared and said, it is ok, just a bad stretch. Dustin Pedroia looks as good as he ever has and Jed Williams, I mean Jed Lowrie has simply been out of his mind at the plate. He has proven he can be an everyday player and will do so for the remainder of the season. All the Sox needed was a few solid games, which they achieved on their west coast trip, to gain some confidence and take off for the rest of the season. Mission accomplished. See you in October.