It was Grateful Dead Night at Fenway Park last night, and I was hopeful that the Red Sox' winning streak would not fade away, but alas, it did, ending at four games in a 5-3 loss to the Atlanta Braves.
In truth, the Braves needed this win more than the Red Sox did, because the days between wins for Atlanta were long, with an eight game loser streak and the league's worst record to show for it.
I'll drop the obscure references to Dead tunes now and just get to the more salient point that the Red Sox may soon need to decide what to do about Clay Buchholz, whose record has now dropped to 0-3 on the season with an ERA of 6.51 after allowing five runs on eight hits plus four walks in 6 1/3 ineffective innings last night. Mallex Smith doubled twice for Atlanta, Nick Markakis added three singles and a double, and with Eduardo Rodriguez expected back from the disabled list in the next couple of weeks as he makes some minor league rehab starts, and knuckleballer Steven Wright pitching brilliantly in his stead, the only real reason to keep Buchholz in the starting five right now is the injury to Joe Kelly. With Kelly on the DL, Henry Owens, who did not impress at all in his first start of the season, will get his second chance when the NY Yankees come to Fenway Park this evening. If Kelly were available, manager John Farrell would have some hard choices to make about whether it makes sense to keep giving Buchholz the ball every fifth day, or demote him to the bullpen. Buchholz has had brilliant stuff in the past, and maybe he can figure his way out of his current troubles, but so far this season he's been the weak link in the starting rotation chain.
The Yankees were idle last night. They'll send Masahiro Tanaka to the hill tonight against Owens as the Yanks take on the Red Sox for the first time this season. The NY Mets were also off last night. They host the San Francisco Giants at Citi Field tonight.
While the Atlanta Braves were ending their futility against the Red Sox at Fenway last night, Atlanta's basketball tram was ending the season for the Boston Celtics at TD Garden. The Hawks knocked the Celtics out of the playoffs with a 104-92 win, taking the first round series in six games. Paul Millsap had seventeen points and eight rebounds to lead the Hawks, who now earn the right to take on Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, who dispatched Atlanta in the eastern conference finals last season. As for the Celtics, they've now been KO'd from the first round of the playoffs three years straight and while they have a budding superstar in Isaiah Thomas, who had 25 points and ten assists last night, they could use a bigger game-changing presence to go with their good young core of players if they're to take the next step and become an elite NBA threat. The big prize via free agency would be Kevin Durant, but a whole lot of teams will come calling for him as well. GM Danny Ainge also has a backlog of draft picks to dangle as trade bait, but he'll need to do something bigger than he's done to this point if the Celtics are really going to turn the corner.
Game one of what should be an incredible 2nd round playoff series in the NHL did not disappoint last night. Two of the world's greatest hockey players in Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby are going head to head as the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals face off. But last night the hero was neither of those two, but Washington's T.J. Oshie, who completed a hat trick with the overtime winner that gave the Caps a 4-3 victory. If this series goes seven games, as many believe it will, that deciding contest should be required viewing even for folks who don't know a blue line from a clothes line.
Finally, the first round of the NFL draft took place last night and the New England Patriots selected no one. Because they couldn't. Because Roger Goodell and the NFL took away the team's first round pick for allegedly, while having no direct actual evidence, taken the air out of some footballs in a game in which they defeated a team in the AFC Championship 45-7, scoring most of those points in the second half using fully inflated, league-approved footballs. Oh, and starting quarterback Tom Brady will also have to miss the first four games of the coming season as further punishment, because the league deemed it "more than likely" that Brady knew the footballs were not up to full air specifications and may have had a hand in making it so. Which is perfectly consistent with how the NFL has handled other transgressions. Like when the league knew it was way more than likely that the Baltimore Ravens' Ray Rice had hit his then fiancee in an elevator so hard that he knocked her unconscious. Knowing that, Goodell and the league hit back hard at Rice and the Ravens by giving him a two game suspension. Once they saw actual video evidence of what they already knew, they banned Rice for a full year. Imagine what they'd have done to Brady and the Patriots if they'd seen actual video evidence of number twelve knocking the air out of a football.
