Overall impression of the game was I felt bad for the Roxs. Having to face Tim Wakefield was the epitome of cruelty for NL teams traveling to AL parks. My baseball history goes back to having to watch the Braves try to beat Wakefield during the Braves/Pittsburg playoff battles back in 92. His knuckler back then confounded the Braves forcing them to bring in old knucklers for batting practice. Wake's career (not to mention his 2004 Boston World series contributions):
Anyway he made alot of the young Roxs look silly while he was throwing is 60/70 miler pitches. He threw 8 innings of 4 hit (2 singles and 2 doubles) baseball. Facing the minimal through 4 innings (a DP in the 3rd). Faced 5 in the 8th inning. Meanwhile Cookie was just as impressive throwing 7 1/3 innings of 7 hit baseball with 4 K's. One note that was interesting while I was keeping score was the way the game lead off...all three outs in the first inning were all bounce backs to the pitcher for three 1-3 putouts.
So much for playing the averages...Hurdle went to Affeldt who had been 100% successful against Ortiz (0 -13) and then he promptly doubled to drive in the winning run. Then to make matters worse for the Roxs after having to face the fireballer in Wakefield (ha ha) the Soxs send in a real flamethrower in Papelbon (or Papelbot as the folks at surviving grady like to call him). Throwing at 97-98 mph, he struck out Matsui, Holliday flew out, and Helton struck out swinging unable to catch up to the heat. Overall a very enjoyable night at the ballpark. Fangraphs view of the game:
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