Lester falls short, De La Torre picks up the slack

The Red Sox really need Jon Lester to pitch late into last night's game, and he couldn't come through. To his credit, he took total responsibility for his struggles, and AAA call-up Jose De La Torre came in and was able to finish out the game on 52 pitches, earning Lester's thanks.

The fallout from Monday's ridiculous 14 inning victory will continue tonight, as Alfredo Aceves will take the mound for what should have been a Franklin Morales start until Morales ended up pitching the final two innings on Monday.  Thanks to De La Torre, the bullpen has had at least one day to recover, though given the amount of work some of the arms have had lately, and the age of some of the bullpen pitchers (Koji Uehara, I'm looking at you), they could probably use another.

But there are going to be rough spots in any season - and this season has had far fewer rough spots than last year, so I won't complain too much. The Red Sox have more wins than any other team in the American League, and only the St Louis Cardinals (42-22) have more in the NL. The Sox have a rough stretch coming up, with a few series against AL East opponents, and games against the first place Tigers and second place Rockies.

It would be great if Aceves could get things back on track tonight, as he certainly has something to prove to the team who demoted him to the minors, but I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't happen. Although I was wrong in my predictions for Lester yesterday, so hopefully I'll be wrong about Aceves today.

Mother's Day mauling

The pitching woes continued for the Red Sox today, as Ryan Dempster gave up six runs in five innings, before giving way to three different relievers - only one of whom managed to pitch a clean outing. The worst of the lot was Andrew Miller, who only managed to record a single out while allowing three runs to score.

Jose De La Torre gave up a pair of runs in a single inning, while Clayton Mortensen was slightly better, giving up just one run in 1.2 innings, and only Craig Breslow managed to record a 0.00 ERA for the day while completing a single inning. The bullpen, heralded as a great strength of this team at the outset of the season, has become a liability.

Certainly, a large part of the bullpen's struggle has been injury-related, as the opening day closer is now out for the season, and his replacement is on the disabled list. But the big difference between the Red Sox incredible April and their so-far dismal May has been in the pitching - they managed to score four times today, and the score wasn't even close.

One of the things that we all looked forward to with the hiring of John Farrell was his expertise with the Red Sox pithing staff. He's certainly gotten Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester back on track, but his magic touch seems to be missing when it comes to the rest of the rotation and the bullpen. Pitching coach Juan Nieves has his work cut out for him lately, but if Farrell has faith in him, so do I.