Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Game 17/162, Crawford Looks to Get Out of Slump, Help the Red Sox Win

Today, Red Sox pitcher Clay Buchholz will pitch up against Gio Gonzalez of the Athletics. This game will start 3:35 PM ET in Oakland. Buchholz has struggled to start the season going 0-2 with a 6.60 ERA. Last year, Buchholz pitched very well and was almost good enough to win the Cy Young award. Gio Gonzalez has had an incredible start to the season, going 2-0 with a 0.47 ERA. 

Carl Crawford, who has the most at-bats out of anyone on the Red Sox, is only hitting .143 to start the season. He does have 2 doubles but only 9 hits to start the season. This is what Crawford said about his struggles:

"I want to end with saying something to Red Sox Nation," it read. "Everybody has been telling me to relax, so I guess I can say that. Just know that everything is the worst it can be right now. There is only one way to go now, it's up. I haven't talked to that many fans yet here in Boston. I've been kind of secluded right now. I won't even stop and get gas. But that's all I can say, things are at their worst right now and I think we can only go up from here."

        After Jed Lowrie's recent hot streak, Manager Terry Francona is not afraid about using bench players. He wants to put in whoever he thinks will give them a better chance to win. 

 "Well, if we had one or two lineups, that meant everything was going right," Francona said Sunday. "I don't know that makes sense right now. I've talked a lot about trying to be consistent. I don't know, we're trying to do whatever we can to play as well as we can and put guys in the best position, so we'll see. I do know as we get into the season, things normally settle down."

Since the Yankees (great game) and the Red Sox lost last night, the Red Sox remain 4.5 games behind first place and 2 games behind second place in the AL East.

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