Tonight's nice 6-1 win over the defending World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals was a nice set up to my upcoming Sox road trip that will take place Wednesday and Thursday in St. Louis and Friday night in Los Angeles when they play the Dodgers
Jose Quintana did everything he could to make his case to stay in the rotation when John Danks returns next week. Quintana sparkled in his 5 1/3 innings of work only giving up one run. He only had a two run lead to work with thanks to Orlando Hudson's two out two run triple in the second inning. He then kept the Cardinals down until the sixth inning when he gave up an RBI single to Allen Craig.
Quintana left the game with two runners on but Nate Jones induced a double play off the bat of Tyler Greene to end the threat. From there the bullpen combo of Matt Thornton, Jesse Crain, and Addison Reed shut the door while the Sox bats put some separation between the two clubs.
Adam Dunn hit a massive solo home run in the eighth to put the Sox up 4-1 and in the same inning A.J. Pierzysnki hit a two run home run to cap the scoring effort.
Robin Ventura and his coaching staff will have some tough decisions to make in a few days when Danks is ready to come off the DL. Do they move Quintana to the bullpen? Keep him in the rotation and send Floyd or Humber to the bullpen?
I would move the increasingly aggravating Phil Humber to the bullpen to straighten his crap out. I expect Gavin Floyd to get back on track and he has more of a track record than Humber.
Phil has been a career minor leaguer until he had a nice 1st half of the 2011 season and of course a perfect game this past April. Hopefully the perfect game doesn't give him a free pass to get bombed out of the park for the rest of the season.
Regardless, Quintana has shown some balls since being put in the rotation. With the win tonight, he improves his record to 2-1 with a 1.98 ERA. Not to mention pitching for a first place team most of the time.
The Sox improve to 34-27 and increase their AL Central lead to 1 1/2 over the Cleveland Indians and now 6 over the Detroit Tigers. Both AL Central foes lost night.
I'll get photos, observations, and hopefully more Sox wins from both St. Louis and LA this week as these are two parks I haven't been to.
Kick Humber to the pen. Maybe shorter stints will give him more focus. The perfect game was historic and not to be shrugged off, but I agree it's not a free pass to get bombed out the rest of the year. Remember that guy who lost a perfect game on a blown call by Jim Joyce? He's not even in the majors anymore.
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