Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations.

The Tampa Bay Rays are for real and what is scary is that down the stretch they will probably also add highly touted prospect David Price.... Of course the same could be said about the Red Sox and Clay Buchholz... For those Red Sox fans who are pressing the panic button - I say relax. It's not even the All-Star break yet and keep in mind that so far the Rays have played 5 more home games than road games while the Red Sox have played 4 more road games than home games. When that flips in the second half of the season - it will also flip the Rays out of first and the Red Sox back where they belong... Happy birthday to super nice guy Sean Casey who is currently the Red Sox back-up 1st baseman and pinch hitter extrodinaire. For some reason I thought Casey was older than 34... I wonder if the Red Sox would make a run at free agent Pat Burrell instead of picking up Manny's option? Burrell has 20 HR already this season and sports an OPS+ of 156. Before you think that he's putting up numbers because he plays his home games in a bandbox - consider that Burrell has only 6 HR at home and 14 on the road.