INTERESTING STAT!

I confess to not knowing how to do the whole Elias thing, but I would venture to say that last night was the first time in the rivalry that Ortiz and Manny collected 7 hits between them in a regular season game and the Red Sox lost in a blow out, or lost at all for that matter. What does it tell us that this offensive powerhouse could lose badly when its 2 big guns were on almost every time up.

1. This team has become Youkilis dependent thanks to the dreadful performance of J.D. Drew. Manny and Ortiz are getting less back-up and so the offence is more front loaded. If I were a Sox fan, I would be screaming on my F*&! Terry Francona blog that Lowell should be batting fifth, at least until August when he runs out of gas.

2. Manny ain't being Manny. Everyone has noted how cold Manny was in April, how typical that was, how he was bound to heat up like always. Well by the end of May, Manny is usually sizzling and continues to do so until mid-August when he tends to fade for about a month or so before resurging. And in a way Manny has heated up. His batting average has risen to 282 and at this rate he should be at 300 in no time. But Manny is not driving the ball with anything like the consistency one ordinarily sees by this point in the season. Here's my interesting stat. Manny's slugging % right now is almost exactly the same as Jason Varitek, who really isn't a power hitter anymore, and the same as Dustin Pedroia, who never was and never will be. Manny got 4 hits last night but he didn't collect the RBI's he would have in past years from 2 of those hits being homers. Are we seeing a decline in Manny owing to age, continued unhappiness in Boston or his own self-distracting propensities?