Beckett Can't Stop the Bleeding

Well, the Boston Red Sox now face a historic task this season if they want to win the World Series Championship.  No team has ever begun the year with a 0-4 record and won the World Series.  As a matter of fact, there's only been one team who has even made it to the mid-summer classic who started 0-4.

Whatever hope remained after a disastrous opening weekend in Texas is slowly disappearing.  Boston's former ace, Josh Beckett, took the mound against the Indians to try and get the team back on track.  He survived an early test with the lead-off man doubling down the right-field line in the bottom of the first.

He looked on target through the first two innings, but started struggling with his command over the next three, walking four batters in the five innings of work.  The walks pushed his pitch count to 106 pitches over the five innings while he blew a 1-0 lead and ended up relinquishing three runs in his first outing.

While it's not a horrendous pitching line, this is an incredibly disappointing result, considering that the previously 1-2 Indians are thought of as one of weakest teams in the American League.  In the meantime, the powerful Boston bats were silenced by second-year pitcher Josh Tomlin.  If you're unfamiliar with the name, don't worry, you wouldn't be alone.

Featuring a blistering 85 MPH fastball, Tomlin plowed his way through the Sox lineup like Kemba Walker through a porous zone defense.  Boston hitters were a combined 4 for 29 (.138 batting average) in the game and somehow looked baffled and perplexed by Tomlin's severely limited and unimpressive repertoire.

There was a growing sentiment that the pitching might cause some problems for this year's Red Sox, but the offense was supposed to the guaranteed, dependable facet of this team.  So far, however, that has failed to be the case. 

The scary proposition now facing the Sox is they're forced into sending Daisuke Matsuzaka to the mound to try and avoid a five-game skid to kick off the 2011 campaign.  A once promising season is quickly turning into a monumentally disappointing one. Boston better get their act together, and it better start tomorrow night, because, although it's still only April, it's vitally important to start digging out of this hole before it gets too deep this early on.