I blame Theo

Well, last night's game turned out to be an entire roller coaster of emotions. We won. You might be thinking to yourself, 'How is that possible?' I mean, I saw the game and I'm still asking myself that question. But we did win, and here are some of the key points:

• We still allowed 9 stolen bases
• Big Papi was benched -- more on this below
• Lowell and Tek were brought into the game and made positive contributions (Tek did with a double and a walk, Lowell had a walk).
  
• Darnell McDonald ('Who?' You may be asking yourself. And rightly so. He was called up from Pawtucket as a possible replacement for Ellsbury) hit not only a 2-run home run to tie the game, but also an almost-Monster home run in the 9th to bring in the winning run. Red Sox Nation, being what it is, has already christened him 'D-Mac.'

So back to Big Papi. Sure, he's had a bad start this year. There is no question. And he's not really hitting; in fact, his average is .146, which is just not okay for a DH obviously. But what we've been seeing this year is not a happy man. He's been frustrated from the start. I'm calling out Epstein on this one. In a press conference at the end of last season, he made it very clear that unless Ortiz started producing, there would no longer be a place for him on this team. Papi seems to have listened. He lost a bunch of weight coming into spring training and he seemed committed to it (and he was even hitting then). So what went wrong? I think the pressure of knowing that he could be gone is getting to him, hence the breaking of the bat over his knee. I didn't like when Epstein called him out and I don't think that this move has helped anything. So yeah, Theo, on this one, it's your fault.