Boston is no doubt the clear cut superior team on the field today with the far more experienced pitcher in Dice-K but the Red Sox are banged up and I'll take my chances with this somewhat blossoming young kid Josh Tomlin at this takeback. Even with Ellsbury back the Sox are not close to 100% and have just not been playing very good ball. They were not good despite taking the series from a struggling Detroit squad and looked awful last night in the blowout loss.
I'm not brain dead and do realize that Carlos Santana and Travis Hafner were just placed on the DL and that makes a total decimated Indians club but the Sox just lost Youkilis to go along with Pedroia on the shelf and the BoSox are far from being at full strength themselves. Guys like Kalish, Nava, Lowell, Patterson and others are laying a big price and frankly too big of a price.
Tomlin has made a pair of starts in the bigs and has looked awesome in doing so. The kid somehow outclassed CC Sabathia and the Yankees at the Jake in his debut and then up north in Toronto looked great again in the 2-1 upset of the Blue Jays. We are not talking about a Stephen Strasburg type kid with the world at his fingertips so I do understand that Tomlin will come back down to Earth at some point but until he does I'll make a small play on him.
Dice-K has been pretty solid of late but he did just allow four runs at home against the depleted Tigers and is never a guy that can be fully trusted. The righty pretty much can't go north of six innings anymore and has more than enough of a downside to always fade him when laying such a pretty penny. In other words the Japanese righthander is always an implosion waiting to happen as that control can just fall by the waste side.
The Tribe is a very untalented team right now and will be hard pressed to win a lot of games in the future. But they have been playing solid ball over the past month or so and at this price with this hot rookie on the bump I'm going to take the chance on the visitors.
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