Should we start to panic in Beantown?  The Red Sox just dropped their 6th straight game – 12-0 to the Blue Jays.  Wakefield looked bad (5 ER on 7 hits and 2 walks in just 3 innings).  The bullpen did not fare much better – Fernando Cabrera, Manny Delcarmen, Hideki Okajima and back-up catcher Dusty Brown each gave up runs in their inning of work.

The lone bright spot – Dusty Brown – back-up catcher, pitching the 9th inning in relief.  Brown threw 13 pitches – 9 for strikes – and gave up 1 earned run on a single, double and RBI groundout.  Not bad for a back-up catcher.

Now I know that all but 2 of the regulars (David Ortiz and Alex Gonzalez) were on the bench against Roy Halladay, but I’d really like to see the Red Sox win a game or 2 against the Indians this weekend. It looks like Manager Terry Francona is going with his starters in tonight’s game to support Jon Lester in his final tune up before the playoffs.  Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia, Victor Martinez, Kevin Youkilis, Jason Bay and Mike Lowell (in addition to Ortiz and Gonzalez) are back in the lineup tonight.  Let’s hope the team comes to play and puts an end to this frustrating 6 game skid.  Go Sox!

Once again, the Josh Bard experiment has failed.  The Red Sox had signed Bard to a non-guaranteed contract worth $1.7 million in January.  March 18th was the last day a team could put a player on unconditional release and only have to pay 30 days termination pay instead of 45 days termination pay.  Bard did catch knuckle-baller Tim Wakefield better this time around and he hit .429 in 6 spring games.  However, because minor league catcher George Kottaras showed that he could catch Wakefield without incident, the Red Sox opted to go the in-house route for the back-up catcher role.

Red Sox GM Theo Epstein had this to say about the move:  “It’s Kottaras’ job to lose right now.  We hope he continues to do a nice job, and Dusty Brown’s having a good camp as well.  This’ll get them some more time.  We had to make this move now because we need George and Wake to work together and we need to make sure we know what we have, and prepare for the season.”  Kottaras has caught another knuckle-ball pitcher – Charlie Zink – for 2 seasons at Triple-A Pawtucket, so the Red Sox felt like that put him a leg-up over Bard and Brown for the back-up role in 2009.  Epstein went on to say:  “Once Kottaras showed he could handle Wake, we decided that was the direction w4e were probably going to go in.  Kottaras had a good camp.  He looked really comfortable catching Wake the other day, which shouldn’t be a real surprise because he has good hands and he’s very comfortable batching Zink in the Minor Leagues.”

Let’s hope this move works out for the Red Sox in 2009.  The Red Sox have already indicated that they want to give starter Jason Varitek more time off this season, so we will likely see the Red Sox back-up on days even when Wakefield won’t be on the mound.  Kottaras is 26 and has had several years of Triple-A experience, so he should be up to the task.