Jacoby Ellsbury has been suffering from an “aggravated groin” (Fenway West). The other night at the ballpark, my friend asked me, “An aggravated groin? What’s an aggravated groin? How did he get an aggravated groin?” I replied, “I’ll have to get on that.” What I meant, was, I’ll have to figure that out. Badump-CHING! Tacoby Bellsbury should be back in the lineup tonight.

With Noah Lowry on the DL and Barry Zito headed to the pen, talk of a six-man rotation in San Francisco has died down. This pleases me, because six-man rotations are one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard of. Teams already have a tough enough time finding five decent starters, and as it is, the fifth slot on most teams is something of a revolving door. And the idea of a 25-man roster consisting of perhaps 13 pitchers is equally disgusting. But as Giants Win notes, the larger concern for the San Fran squad may be their utter and complete lack of offense—on pace to score fewer runs than a dead ball era team. Oh my God.

I, like many, thought Phil Hughes’ “oblique strain” was code for “needs to go work out his suckage in the minors.” But now they’re saying it’s a stress fracture in one of his ribs. Hughes says he has “no idea” how he got it. But how do you fracture a rib and not realize it? Given that he also suffered a strained hamstring and a sprained ankle last year, NYY fans have to be hoping this is nothing more than a run of bad luck. But on Bronx Banter, it sounds like hope (not to mention patience) is running out.

Lone Star Ball gives Mindy McCready’s dad an Inigo Montoya Award. Any cross-pollination between baseball and The Princess Bride is always appreciated.

I like the Brewers. I have three of them on my fantasy team. I picked them to upset the Cubs for the NL Central title. But I don’t see how they’re going to do that without Ben Sheets. His first three starts filled me with hope. His subsequent triceps strain, despair. Now I don’t know what to think. Fortunately, I have the Hardball Times and pitch FX to tell me what’s what. Unfortunately, they also think the triceps tightness could be related to a rotator cuff issue. Nooooooooooooooo…..

Did you see Frank Thomas hit that triple a few days back? Did you wonder, whoah, when does Frank Thomas hit a triple? So did MopUpDuty. My favorite nugget from this post: Mark McGwire had only 6 triples in his entire career.

This week’s Metro column, on why the Rays are for real, but the other April surprise in the AL East, the Orioles, are not.

And finally, the Nats have a song. So Bugs and Cranks came up with hilarious ditties for all the other teams, too! I will now joyfully sing along to the new, awesome, Red Sox fan song:

We’re rawkous (raucous!) for the Red Sox!
We’re rawkous for the Red Sox!
We’re crazy and we’re awesome, brah!
We’re rawkous for the Red Sox!

Sully and Fitzy and Paddy Go Bragh
We’ll cut yer fuckin’ face if you look at us wrong!
So let’s go Nation of Red Sox fans!
Let’s throw some pizza in the stands!

Let’s go Red Sox!

As the lyrics of Jonathan Papelbon’s warm-up song (that *Dropkick Murphys tune from The Departed) sort of sound to me like, “I’m a sailor BRAAAAAH! And I lost my BRAAAAAH!”, I’m happy to see the emphatic syllable making the rounds in other Sox-related shanties.

*The lyrics were actually penned by Woody Guthrie. The real lyrics are, “I’m a sailor peg and I lost my leg.” The leg part, I get—but peg? Is that like, “I’m a sailor, Peg” (as if to his girlfriend, Peggy)? Inquiring minds want to know.

Drunk, belligerent Al Reyes to arresting officer: “Don’t tase me, bro!” (DRaysBay)

In other booze news, Drunk Jays Fans is having a healthy debate about all those…drunk…Jays…fans. How apt.

El Lefty Malo has an intriguing suggestion for Barry Zito: send him down.

Fire Joe Morgan took their sarcastic snark to new heights yesterday with YouTube. Epic.

I love reading CenterField. This woman has gone above and beyond to bring us the video of Jonathan Papelbon’s asstastic Dunkin Donuts commerical. I have been waiting for this moment all week!

There’s a reason UmpBumper Nick didn’t join our fantasy league. “You guys have to understand, fantasy sports is like crack to me,” he confessed. “Once I start, I can’t stop.” Sound familiar to any of you? Well, here’s a way to save yourself from yourself. (RotoNation)

Edgar Renteria apparently likes getting booed now (”When the fans boo me, that’s real exciting”) reports the Boston Herald. That’s not what he said when he left Boston for the Braves, when he said that an early booing by Red Sox fans caused him to put too much pressure on himself. “I don’t know if [the fans] were looking for 30 homers, like Garciaparra in the past did, but it was crazy,” he kvetched at the time, adding “I had never been booed in my career.” We weren’t looking for thirty homers. We just didn’t want thirty errors.

The Red Sox and the homers they hit, from Me and Pedro. An excellent chuckle (at least for Sox fans).

Since 1956, only 5 pitchers have gone their first three starts without giving up a run. Today, tomorrow, and Sunday, three pitchers will try to match this feat—Ben Sheets, Oliver Perez, and Kyle Lohse. Get the details from Baseball Reference’s Stat of the Day.

Doug Glanville’s writing a guest column for the NYT this season.

Also, there’s a Red Sox t-shirt buried under the new Yankee Stadium.

Thank you, that is all.

In retrospect, this should’ve been a liveblog. Oh well.

From: Paul
To: UmpBump Staff
2:21 pm (Eastern Daylight Time)
So I’m following the game on MLB Gamecast here at work today. I just wanted to report that all of Jamie Moyer’s fastballs are showing up as “changeup” on the pitch type. Yes, he’s that slow.

From: Coley
2:25 pm
I just blogged that there’s talk that there could be a fight at the game today. But then I realized, there is 50 percent less of a chance than usual, because you can’t get mad when Jamie Moyer hits you with a pitch.

From: Sarah
2:38 pm
I just ducked out of work to listen to the first inning of the Sox-Tigers game in my car radio. With Kenny Rogers on the mound, I couldn’t figure out why the announcers weren’t talking about the game. “What’s happening?? Why aren’t they calling the pitches?!?!” I needn’t have fretted. Turns out, Rogers is just working thaaaaaat…..slooooow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Free coffee and baseball: This is a match made in heaven, from Sarah’s point of view. Two notes: 1. Jose Canseco is worried that he’ll get poisoned via free coffee. 2. Jonathan Papelbon is advertising free coffee (with purchase of either a flatbread sandwich or a pizza) at Dunkin’ Donuts, available the day after the Red Sox win. Sounds a bit complicated to me—and it’s cheap of DD to exclude their own employees. Not to mention that Paps looks like a cheeseball in this photo. Why didn’t they just go with a real post-game shot?

Speed: the Blue Jays are going to be swiping more bags this season. And speaking of speed, I enjoyed watching the A’s relievers throw over to first with Jason Varitek standing on the bag. Yes, let’s make sure the 35-year old catcher doesn’t steal.

Fans: It just goes to show you that the Dodgers really do have a special relationship with their fans, as LA hurler Brad Penny warmed up with a lucky fan yesterday. Across town, Angels owner Arte Moreno bought souvenirs for several fans. And it seems that Baltimore’s long-suffering faithful are finally abandoning their ballclub. Just don’t get mad when the Sox come to town in May and bring their hordes of free-spending fans with them, transforming Camden Yards into Fenway South. The O’s need the revenue.

No-hitters: Yesterday, ESPN.com carried a teaser for the Chicago-Detroit game saying the Dontrelle Willis was throwing a no-no through five innings. To me, that’s just false advertising. Sure, it’s technically accurate to say that D-Train ended up one-hitting the White Sox, but it would perhaps be more descriptive to say that Willis went five innings, while walking seven and striking out none. It was the least dominant no-no bid I’ve ever watched. An outing more worthy of ESPN’s hype would have been Jake Peavy’s two-hit complete game or Manny Parra’s legit seven-strikeout no-hit bid, carried through five innings.

Reds Rookies: On the heels of Johnny Cueto’s stunning debut Thursday, another Reds rookie pitcher impresses today. Edinson Volquez has pitched five innings so far, with seven K’s and one earned run. He’s scattered three hits and two walks.

Sleep: The Red Sox really do need it. Their odyssey from Florida to Japan to California to Toronto is starting to tell, and it’s most readily apparent on defense. Boston has already committed two errors halfway through today’s game. They had two errors yesterday, too, and have racked up a number of sloppy near-errors over the past few games. They have a day off tomorrow and open Fenway Park on Tuesday.

I bet the most “free-spirited” pitcher to wear a Red Sox uniform since Spaceman Lee is wishing he’d never kicked up his heels after clinching the division title. An encore was demanded after the Sox clinched pennant, when Papelbon added a pair of diving goggles and a cigar to the routine. Now, Boston’s mayor is demanding that the closer perform at least once more, at tomorrow’s parade:

“He promised the people he would do the dance,” Mayor Thomas M. Menino said today at a press conference at City Hall, “and he will do the dance.”

And it should be noted that while the Associated Press is usually quite meticulous, the headline going out with this article isn’t quite accurate:

PAPELBON TO WEAR DANCING SHOES FOR TUESDAY PARADE

The AP should know by now: when Paps dances, he kicks his shoes off.

My girlfriend Suz and I have been joking about the face that Jonathan Papelbon makes when he’s getting ready to deliver a pitch. It’s like he just sucked down a lemon. Or maybe he’s about to blow a smoke ring? (Suz does a good impression).

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a picture of the Papel-face anywhere on the internets, which is hard to believe.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Others have noticed the face.

Valen writes on a Sporting News message board, “Love the look on Papelbon’s face as he stares in. Not sure I have seen too many pitchers look more focused and intense.”

Denton at FanHouse says, “He’s already got back-to-back 30-save seasons, and has a ridiculous 71 K’s in 51.1 innings. And, seriously, who has a better game face than Paps?”

And then there’s this guy, who decided to post his version of the Papel-face on YouTube.

What do you think? I think it’s a pretty good impression.

Jonathan Papelbon is on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week looking like one scary badass. In other words, like he usually looks when he’s pitching.

But this weekend, after the Sox clinched the division, we got to see another side of Papelbon. A side we hadn’t glimpsed before. The side that dances in its underwear in public:

Plus, later, we met the side that runs around inside the clubhouse in its jockstrap. But alas, there’s no video of that floating around YouTube (yet).

Jonathan Papelbon can’t make up his mind. First he was a closer, but he got hurt at the end of the year. So he decided he’d be better off as a starter (that way he’d have more time to rest in between starts). It made sense. After all, he was a starter in the minors. Starting was what came naturally to him. He wanted to be a starter.

“I just feel I’m better as a starter,” he said. “The reason why this team drafted me in ‘04 was to be a starter. I’m going to take this opportunity and run with it.”

That’s what he told the Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan on March 4. That was three weeks ago.

Yesterday, Papelbon volunteered to move back to Boston’s bullpen. In fact, he says he wants to pitch out of the bullpen for the rest of his career.

So what changed?

Truthfully, I don’t know. But everything that we know about Papelbon is that he’s a competitor. And nobody has anything bad to say about him. So at this point I’m willing to believe the he simply saw the team’s need for a reliable closer and volunteered for the job.

After all, Papelbon is a badass. He even went so far as to adopt the Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn haircut last season. He had a stealth fighter ERA (barely detectable). So let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.

Do I believe he’s rather be closing than starting? No. Do I believe he wants to close for the rest of his career? No.

But do I think Papelbon is a team player? Absolutely. Actually, I think I’ve got a Papelboner.

Will he close or won’t he?

He will.

From ESPN.com:

The Boston Red Sox didn’t have to search long for Mike Timlin’s replacement as closer.

Two days after announcing that the 41-year-old Timlin will start the season on the disabled list, multiple team sources told ESPN’s Erin Andrews that the Red Sox have decided Jonathan Papelbon has regained the closer’s job.

Papelbon had 35 saves and a 0.92 ERA last season as a closer in his rookie year, but a shoulder problem detected late in the season led the team to decide he would move to the starting rotation in 2007.

Because of Papelbon’s shoulder issues, there will be restrictions on how he is used: He won’t throw when he is tired and he won’t appear in more than three games in a row, Andrews reports.

The news comes after manager Terry Francona announced that Timlin, who has been bothered by a strained oblique, will start the season on the DL.

What does it all mean? It means the guys the Sox hoped would replace Papelbon have all sucked. Hard.

Right-handers Joel Pineiro, Brendan Donnelly and Julian Tavarez just didn’t inspire the Sox with confidence. And really, how could the Sox go with a closer they didn’t trust when they had an all-star closer already on their roster?

Of course, if Papelbon’s arm falls off, everyone will second guess this decision. But then, people would have been screaming for Papelbon the second Pineiro or Tavarez blew a save. So I guess the Sox were damned either way.

UPDATE (Sarah Green)

Gordon Edes of the Boston Globe is reporting that the move was Papelbon’s idea—and not because his teammates have all sucked. (Hard.) Instead, he says, the impetus behind the move was Jonathan himself:

Papelbon, despite his public declarations of embracing the role of starter, said he hasn’t been able to sleep this spring because he wanted to close and finally told Francona of his desire on the field prior to Tuesday night’s exhibition game.

[…]

Papelbon said he told team captain Jason Varitek of his desire to close before speaking with the manager, and also consulted his family. His parents were in Clearwater to watch him pitch three innings today.

Both Papelbon and Francona insisted that Papelbon had done so well strengthening his shoulder that the medical reasons for making him a starter have been allayed. Francona did say he would have to closely monitor Papelbon’s workload to protect against overuse. He said last August, Papelbon threw more pitches than anyone in the big leagues.

[…]

Papelbon was insistent that he would not do something that would jeopardize his health just because the team didn’t have a clear-cut alternative as closer.

“To make a decision solely based on one year is kind of retarded, in my opinion,” he said. “This is something I’d like to do the rest of my career. Forget about starting. Go out (as a closer), chase records and hopefully do for the Red Sox what Mariano Rivera does for the Yankees.”

(As an aside, here’s an opposing view that puts Schilling as the master puppeteer behind the move. I’m not sure that this theory holds any water, but I submit it for your approval nonetheless.)

A couple of notes: Julian Tavarez has now been penciled in as the Sox’ fifth starter, with Tim Wakefield moving to the 4-spot. I fail to see what Mike Timlin’s early stint on the DL (as mentioned in Coley’s ESPN article) has to do with this decision—despite all the chatter around Timlin closing, I’m convinced that possibility was mere politeness on the part of the Boston front office. The Sox were really hoping Craig Hansen would be ready this year, which apparently he is not (after some mechanical adjustments, he is still inconsistent). Tavarez was actually, in my mind, the closest thing the Sox had to a closer after Paps, and Piniero was their insurance policy. Oh, and yeah, Brendan Donnelly. (Riiiight.) And I doubt Tavarez will stay in the rotation even most of the season. The Sox have plenty of other prospects to turn to, not least of which is lefty Jon Lester, still in need of some innings after coming back from cancer this winter. Some of the other back-of-the-rotation guys and minor-leaguers they’ve been hoarding? Kason Gabbard, David Pauley, Devern Hansack, and Kyle Snyder. Now, you probably haven’t heard of any of them. But each one of them appeared for the Sox last season and had at least one good outing. I’m not terribly worried, just as long as Matt Clement stays as far away from Kenmore Square as possible.

FWIW, the Washington Post story about it is rather hilarious:

CLEARWATER, Fla., March 22 — Even as the Boston Red Sox were conducting a very public search for a closer this spring, and even as Jonathan Papelbon was preparing himself to be the team’s fourth starter, both team and player were wrestling deep into the night with the same haunting thought: The Red Sox already possessed a knockout closer, and it was Papelbon himself, and until one side came clean to the other with the contents of their heart, neither would be able to sleep the sleep of the innocent.

That’s really Woodstein-type stuff.