The Citizens Seven: Red Sox
The Banker
The Banker: First and foremost let me just start off by saying that I look forward to this World Series matchup we got coming up, considering everyone on both teams is healthy and both of us are riding high coming into the series having dismantled the NL and ALCS foes. What’s the pulse around Boston? How does Red Sox Nation feel about going into Citizens Bank Park?
KAT Daddy: To be perfectly honest with you Red Sox Nation has been out of it recently, more people are into the Bruins. Peopled who’ve watched the last few games saw a struggle against the Pirates. The bat’s were there, the pitching wasn’t good. But if you walk down the street you see most people in Bruins jerseys and such.
The Banker: Back to the fact that this is supposedly a World Series preview. How do you feel about that? Is Red Sox Nation confident in their team that they will make it to the World Series? You guys are only slightly behind the Yankees for best record in AL (at the time of this writing) so you definitely have something to brag about. And how would you feel playing the Phillies, assuming both teams made it to that point?
KAT Daddy: The Red Sox in an AL ballpark are hands down the best team in baseball. Three batters batting .300 or better, Big Papi has had something of a resurgence because he’s having a career year and A-Gone is off the chart. But put this lineup into a National League ballpark, it’s harder. The only real way to keep Ortiz in the lineup is to move Gonzalez into RF, and that brings you down defensively so it’s very difficult to put a bat like Papi in the lineup.
The Banker: I don’t know much about the BoSox starting rotation besides the fact that Becket has been on fire recently and Lester is among the tops in AL in wins. Lackey was, for the most part, considered a bit of a disappointment last season. Is there any chance he will be equally as disappointing in his Wednesday night start against rookie Vance Worely?
KAT Daddy: He is the worst starting pitcher in Major League Baseball. Of all ML starting pitchers with at least 8 starts he has the worst era. It’s pretty embarrassing. On the flip side, though, Beckett has a fantastic ERA and an even better WHIP.
The Banker: You guys started, what, 2-10 to the season? It was bad. Clearly though, since then you’ve turned it around and my God you’ve played 40-22 ball since then! What happened? What was going wrong and how was it corrected?
KAT Daddy: At the beginning of the year Adrian Gonzalez was batting .250 or so, Papi wasn’t seeing the ball right. Now, both are hitting well, Jacoby is finally healthy, Saltalamacchia is actually heating up and Crawford was heating up before I he got injured. The real difference is that the offense started to click. Also, watch out for Josh Reddick. No relation to JJ Reddick.
The Banker: How does The Nation feel about JD Drew? I just took a quick peak at this numbers to this point in the season and compared to how he’s produced in previous years, especially 2009, he isn’t living up to par. What’s going on there?
KAT Daddy: He’s always hurt, that guy. He’s never lived “up to par”. He was suppose to be “the one” when we signed him after Trot Nixon left, because we’d been putting some right fielders in there and they just couldn’t stick around. This year is particularly ugly. Struggles every time he steps up to plate… it’s scary. I’ll tell you this though, don’t intentionally walk anyone in front him. He’s batting .365 when someone is walked in front of him. He just gets energized when there’s a walk in front of him, for whatever reason.
The Banker: Adrian Gonzalez is really, really good. Like, scary good.
KAT Daddy: He SHOULD scare you. Every time he goes up to the plate you should assume he’s gonna get a hit, that’s how good he is. It should really scare you that his career BA against Philly is .350, against Cliff Lee it’s .700. He’s 7 for 10 with a HR and 3 RBI’s. He’s slugging at a 1.3 clip and it’s jumped .015 points over last 10 games.
The Banker: When the Sox snagged both A-Gone and Crawford many tabbed them for 1,000 runs scored this season. Meanwhile the Phillies were stealing everyone else’s aces by robbing someone by the name of Clifton Phifer Lee away from the Yankees. To this point both teams offseason goals have come to fruition: the Phillies ERA is lowest in MLB and the Sox have outpaced everyone in runs scored. In fact, your Sox have outscored the Phillies by almost a hundred more runs, 89 actually which comes out to roughly 1.1 more runs per game!!! With the Phillies rolling and the Sox being good as they are what do you expect will be the story of this series: besides the middle game it’s Becket-Lee and Lester-Hamels. Will the offense or the pitching being the story of the series?
KAT Daddy: Since it’s in the NL, Big Papi won’t play unless pinch hitting. It’s probably not looking good, taking the bat out of our best hitters and having to bat pitcher instead. Sox are very hurt right now, just kind of going through the motions until the playoffs. Look at our pitching staff: Phillies have 3 pitchers with 8 wins or more? Red Sox only 3 pitchers w/ more than 9 games starter. Top 3 is pretty set with Lester, Beckett, Buchholz. After that it’s a toss up. So many possibilities. But to answer your question, I do think it’ll be about pitching.
KAT Daddy
KAT Daddy’s Questions
KAT Daddy: Is your new ballpark hitter friendly? Because I’m looking at some numbers from this year and it doesn’t look very hitter friendly.
The Banker: Citizens Bank Park was built in ’04, admist some front office changes in strategy they had finally decided to push it and try to make the most out of their stud prospects in Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell and Chase Utley. So in addition to the ballpark they brought in some big free agents in Jim Thome and Billy Wagner. Well, the ballpark was built to be a hitters ballpark, or at least that was the goal but the numbers don’t lie, CBP has been relatively fair to both hitters and pitchers. The national media will smear the truth and have you believe this is absolutely a hitters ballpark but it’s pretty equal.
KAT Daddy: How do you feel about having the best offense, by a good clip, coming to CBP.
The Banker: Not excited at all. I honestly think we lose 2/3 even with Lee and Hamels going. Sox offense is, needless to say, ridiculous. It seems every night I check the box score of their games and they’ve a little less than casually scored a solid 12 runs. Nbd. So yeah, to have them coming in here, from an offensive standpoint, is not very thrilling.
KAT Daddy: Who you most concerned about pitching to, besides A-Gone, who is MVP of AL to this point.
The Banker: If he wasn’t on DL I’d say Crawford (follow up question: Really? Why’s that?). Just because I know he’s being screwed this year: the percentage of balls he bats the number of line drives he’s been hitting are right on course with the rest of his career average but his batting average on those balls in play (BABIP) has been so friggin awful it’s not even fair. Anyway, I would probably says Pedroia right because I know he’s a Lazer Show or Youkilis, because I caught some of that last Sox-Yanks series and I know he killed them, plus I saw his fantasy score last week from one guy in my league and it was pretty damn high.
KAT Daddy: Worried about Jacoby stealing? Sox not known for base stealing this season, besides Crawford and Jacoby.
The Banker: I know he’s lightening in a bottle but I am actually not very concerned about base stealers. I know that Cliff and Cole both have good moves to first base to keep the runner aboard but, and more importantly, in addition to that I know that Carlos Ruiz is very good at throwing base runners out. The consensus in Philadelphia is that he [Ruiz] is one of the most underrated catchers in all of baseball and I think he’s got a hell of an arm to throw out runners, I don’t have any stats on me to back that up but that’s what I think.
KAT Daddy: Why do people in Philly hate Terry Francona?
The Banker: To the best of my knowledge, the team didn’t do so good while he was the manager here and they he up and left for Boston where he was greeted with an All Star roster and then he won 2 World Championships, so you can imagine why we’d be a little salty.
KAT Daddy: Worried about Red Sox Nation coming in to take over?
The Banker: Actually, not really. Definitely not concerned about it, I personally welcome fans from other teams in I think it’s great for the stadium and for baseball to have fans traveling or fans who are forced to be located in different parts of the country who finally get a chance to attend a game. I know Red Sox fans travel extraordinarily well but behind you guys we’ve got the 2nd longest active sellout streak in major league baseball. We just eclipsed 162 games the other day, so I know it’s been 2 full seasons and I know you guys have been sold out for a few years now* so, no, I’m not really concerned about CBP getting overrun by Sox fans.
*= Red Sox Sellout streak dating back to 2003. Closing in on 700 consecutive.
KAT Daddy: Are Philly fans hostile? Will there be any fight?
The Banker: Oh yeah. I would not be if I was there, but I don’t represent the majority of the Phillies fans so if a game gets out of hand, doesn’t quite go their way, they’ll be a fight or two.
