Koji Time

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At the beginning of the season, I had Joel Hanrahan on my fantasy team. I had high hopes for Hanrahan, but even when he went down, I wasn't worried about the closer situation. If you're guessing I added Andrew Bailey to my fantasy team, you'd be correct - but I also added Koji Uehara.

It's goes without saying that my best add was certainly the last one, as we all know about Uehara's incredible numbers since taking over the ninth inning.

Uehara's brilliance hasn't gone unnoticed by his teammates either. Fellow pitcher Craig Breslow is blogging over at WEEI for the duration of the playoffs, and here's what he had to say:

But what he’s done is absolutely unbelievable. John Lackey and I were joking, why don’t we just start him and see how long he can go? If it’s three or four innings and 15 to 20 pitches and he gets tired, then we’ll worry about bringing somebody in behind him.

The best perspective on his stuff has got to come from a hitter because the way I see it, his stuff seems very pedestrian. It seems almost like, ‘Huh, maybe I can mess around with a splitter and get a pitch like that.’ Then you see the swings that guys take and you see the results that he’s gotten — not over an inning or two innings but 75 innings. I think collectively we’re all missing something, because the swings that guys take at that pitch are like he’s throwing a wiffleball.

Every time the rest of the Sox pitching staff can hand the ball safely to Koji Uehara at the end of each game, I'm confident in our chances. Gone are the days of heart-attack innings from Jonathan Papelbon circa 2011, or the nightmarishly unpredictable antics of Alfredo Aceves in 2012.

No, 2013 is different. It's Koji time - High Five City.