Boston turns its lonely eyes to Lackey

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After the incredible euphoria Red Sox Nation felt during the 2013 season and playoff run, the last month has been brutal. Twitter has been buzzing with a self-pitying and sarcastic hashtag, #worsttofirsttoworst, and comparisons to the atrocious 2012 season have been made in several corners.

Realistically, the Red Sox aren't the worst. The worst team in baseball (according to their record) is the Houston Astros. The worst team in the AL East is the Tampa Bay Rays (and I unashamedly revel in that fact). The Red Sox are only five games out, thanks to the AL East finally being a mediocre division after years of dominance.

It's only May, and there's plenty of time for the Red Sox to scrape their way back into things - but that has to start sooner rather than later. John Lackey will start off this weekend's three-game series against the Rays tonight at Tropicana Field.

If the Sox can sweep the Rays, it would push the pesky Tampa Bay team further in to the basement, and once agains send Boston clawing closer to a .500 record and a clean start. For the Red Sox to get themselves back to .500 by the end of May they'll need to win eight of nine - with five games coming on the road, five against the Rays, and four against the Braves.

It's a tall order, but just like any other series, the Red Sox will have to take this stretch one game at a time. Tonight, they'll hope that Lackey can rebound from a less-than-stellar start his last time out.

Buchholz keeps rolling

Obviously beating the Astros isn't an achievement for the ages; it's happened fifteen times already this season, after all. But it is worth noting that Clay Buchholz has officially become the very first starter in the majors to reach five wins this season - and he's done so without a single loss, with a sparkling ERA.

John Farrell thinks that Clay's success is sustainable, and we've certainly seen how incredible his stuff can be. The key to a successful season is always in the pitching, and given how both Buchholz and Jon Lester have pitched to start out the season, my expectations for 2013 are very different than they were on Opening Day.

The offense gave Buchholz a seven run cushion, but he didn't need it, giving up just two runs in 7.2 innings to defeat the newest punching bag of the American League (you're welcome, Mariners). Most of all, Buchholz is fun to watch when he's going well, and he's been a blast to watch this April.

Catching up with old friends

Sometimes when players leave the Red Sox, fans are content; for whatever reason, sometimes it's just time for them to pack up and go. Other times, we wish they could stay, even if what we get in return is incredible.  No matter how players leave town, it's always fun to see where they end up.

As you all know, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez got traded to the Dodgers last season - the laid back style of LA seems to be suiting them, at least based on this photo tweeted from the Dodgers account:

Meanwhile, out in Houston, former Red Sox shortstop Jed Lowrie, who was always rather more cerebral than his fellows, is making a serious hobby of photography:

Outfielder Josh Reddick, now with the Oakland A's, has reportedly accepted a beard-growing challenge from WWE wrestler Daniel Bryan: 

And perhaps most hilariously of all, Manny Ramirez is currently playing professional baseball in Taiwan, for $25,000 a month.  For comparison's sake, Ramirez made nearly six times that PER GAME in the Red Sox Championship season of 2004.

Time for a balanced schedule

The way that the major league schedule is set up is absolutely appalling. Let's just look at the state of the American League for a moment. Over in the AL West, the A's, Angels, Rangers, and even Mariners will benefit from the arrival of the Astros in their division - they can beat up on Houston nineteen times this year.

Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, the AL East is pretty much up in the air. Toronto had a HUGE offseason, Baltimore is coming off of a playoff appearance, and those two are the usual basement dwellers. The Blues Jays, Orioles, Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays will play each other for almost half of their seasons - think about how that changes things in terms of Wild Card chances.

Now that each league has fifteen teams, and large blocks of interleague play are over (in favor of spreading those games from beginning to end), it's time to demand a balanced schedule. We've all pretty much accepted that the playoffs are essentially a crapshoot; any team can get hot at the right time, and ride that all the way to the World Series. But getting to the playoffs (yes, even with the new expansion) take quality play all season long.

But when the Rangers get to play the Astros nineteen times, and the Red Sox only play them seven times, how can we pretend that their records can be fairly compared? It's obvious to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention that a balanced schedule needs to be next - at least within each league.

Lucky in Houston - for once

After all these years of hardship, and being the laughingstock of the National League (now in the AL West - you're welcome, Mariners), the Houston Astros had to catch a break sometime. The Astros have kicked off their first season in the American League by introducing a new logo and new uniforms, but that probably won't be enough to turn their fortunes around.

However, it's interesting to note that there is a certain anomaly that is currently favoring the Astros over all twenty-nine other MLB teams. According to the injured player list that MLB provides (mostly for fantasy baseball players looking to set their rosters), the Astros are the only team without any current injury concerns. There isn't so much as a strained hamstring on the entire roster.

Now that I've called attention to it, I'm sure the entire pitching staff will require immediate Tommy John surgery, so I apologize in advance to any Astros fans who stumble upon this blog. They say that you have to control the controllables, and injuries certainly fall into the "uncontrollable" category. Perhaps some kind of fate or karma or higher power of your choice decided that since the Astros couldn't control anything about themselves, the injury bug could skip them - for now.

American League Astros

By a show of hands, who is excited for the Astros to be playing in the American League this year?

In all seriousness, I was just completing my morning routine of checking Red Sox headlines, and my last stop was (as always) the Extra Bases blog, where there was a short blurb about old friend Jed Lowrie being traded from Houston to the Oakland A's (which is now an intra-divisional trade), and it included a list of the highest paid players on the Astros:

• RHP Bud Norris ($3 million)
• 1B Carlos Pena ($2.9 million)
• RHP Jose Veras ($2 million)
• LHP Wesley Wright ($1.025 million)
• RHP Philip Humber ($850,000)

For reference, the five highest paid players in Boston are making considerably more:

• RHP John Lackey ($16.5 million)
• RHP Ryan Dempster ($13.25 million)
• DH David Ortiz ($13 million)
• OF Shane Victorino ($13 million)
• SS Stephen Drew ($9.5 million)

Obviously, the highest paid players aren't always the best, and having a large payroll is no guarantee of success, but the comparison is pretty stark for the Astros. The Astros will be at Fenway at the end of April for four games, and then the Red Sox will head to Houston for a three game set at the beginning of August. 

Given how the Red Sox have been playing in the last year or so, even the moribund Astros can't be counted on as an easy win - but their presence in the American League can only be good for the rest of the AL's teams.