"Dice" Clay

Educated Cheese presents the inagural performance of the one and only:

"Dice" Clay Comedy Team!

With absolutely no affiliation with the notorious comedian Andrew Dice Clay or his nursery rhyme spins, Dice and Clay offer similar laughs on a much less controversial scale. Such classics as:

"Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, and Jack came down with an ERA under 3. Oooh!"

or

Clay: "Little Miss Muffet..."
Daisuke: "Sat on a tuffet..."
Clay: "Because Terry benched her for the season!"
Clay & Daisuke: "Oooh!"

You can pick up their latest comedy album at your local Tower Records store.

Les(ter) is more

The Sox may have outscored the Jays by only 4 runs that last series, but they swept em so who gives a f*ck? After that 4 game taint handing via Los Rays (They're Spanish now) the Sox have won a healthy 7 of the last 9 (mostly against "bird" teams) and half of these guys look like they're here to play this year and we can only hope the other half come around pretty soon.

Today is an off day. I hate off days. Even with the plethora of Boston sports going on around this city right now, we get no sports today. B's and C's don't play til Saturday, when we (as a city) get another chance for the elusive Sports Trifecta. With the other winter sports still going strong in the playoffs, I'm guessing all the talk on the radio, tv and high profile blogs (like or unlike ours is up to you to decide) will not be about the Sox and their hot streak, and that's ok by me. Soon enough it will all be about baseball and maybe this little streaky mcstreak will get the boys going so when the rest of the world turns their eyes this way the Sox will be rolling up on The Yanks and those Los Rays and making those first two weeks a distant memory.

Now that's my kinda prevention

Two nights ago Toronto scored somewhere in the area of a million runs, annihilating any Sox pitcher that came in a 10 foot radius of the mound. Last night they scored 1 against Clay Buchs. I'm liking the one run thing a lot better. It focuses on the run prevention and less on the winning prevention and if you haven't been watching the last few weeks, the Sox could use some wins.

Also, in case you didn't see it last night with the game tied in the top of the 8th with two outs and the bases loaded, Francona stepped up and called The Big Guy back to the dugout while he was about 2 steps from the batters box. Doormat Lowell came in to pinch hit and took a walk which happened to force in the winning run, but if you didn't feel bad for Ortiz getting all the way up to the plate with a chance to redeem himself only to be forced to cowardly head back to the bench to chop up some salsa, well then my friend, you have no soul. Not that I didn't think it was the right call, and you can't argue with the result, but sometimes you really feel for Ortiz. I can only hope the $14M he makes this year can get him through this rough time.

The Ueck is going under the knife.

Maybe if Mr. Belvedere wasn't so busy being so damn funny with his little English accent and dry humor then Bob Uecker wouldn't be undergoing heart surgery this week. Put a little more effort into it Bel, you selfish son of a bitch. Honestly though, Ueck in Major League is still one of the best characters in a movie and he was pretty much playing the role of himself, most likely with similar amounts of whiskey in both the movie and real life. Here's a quick recovery Bobby U.

Fabio called up

The Sox called up Fabio today. Its a bit unclear to me how a former male model will help the Sox, but at this point, you take whatever you can get. I mean the guy is jacked, so maybe he's got a mean fastball. Plus, he can take a beating, as evidence by his face colliding with a bird on a roller coatser. Risky move, but lets face it, Atchison was kind of lousy...

...oh, Fabio CASTRO. nevermind.

Prevention

For Theo,

From Websters: Prevention (Pre-ven-shun) - The act of preventing or impeding.

From Jon: Run Prevention - The act of preventing "runs" or impeding "runs".

There are 30 teams in the MLB. Most of them have been better at preventing runs thus far into the season. How much better? Here are some stats (I know, I'm desperate, breaking out the stats) that one would associate with run prevention and how the Sox rank against the other 29 teams in the MLB.

Hits allowed - 2nd to last
Runs and earned runs - 3rd to last
ERA - 26th worst
WHIP 25th worst
Batting Average Against - 23rd worst

And the team that was supposed to be a defensive juggernaut with 9 vacuum cleaners running around picking up every ball hit around, they have the 18th worst fielding percentage. I could check to see where their collective UZR (popular fielding stat) ranks, but then I'd have to look up exactly what it means and I'm in no mood to learn anything this early in the morning.

Oh yeah, Sox won last night in a real pitchers duel, 13-12. Pre-ven-shun.

Baseball Skills 101

Attention Jason Varitek and Victor Martinez:

This is what major league catchers are supposed to do.