Yanks@ Rays, 3-ish.

So we hoped to avoid the "full day of having to think about losing the first game" feeling, but it's here. However, like I said yesterday, it's not all that bad, as there were no disasters or anything like that. And if you were thinking going into the season that our bullpen is our weakpoint, and you want to use that game to prove your point, well, terrible job. It wasn't like we had the game but the bullpen imploded and we lost it. A couple inches either way on several plays and we're in the good day-off zone right now.

And yes, I'm a person who doesn't understand why the Red Sox would recognize they have one of the greats at the closer position and pay him whatever he wants without a second thought as literally the top priority of the entire roster, but hey, bullpens are funny things. Every team really just has a bunch of guys not quite good enough to be starters, any of whom could put up a solid week, month, or year before becoming human again. The key is to not overwork these guys, and Lester pitched 7 strong yesterday (while the offense did end up scoring enough runs to take the game to the bottom of the ninth) against a team considered to be a lock to win their division.

It's a shame we live in an EEIdiotic world where we have to defend not being "on the bridge" after one game out of 162. Remember the 80s when baseball fans (and people in general) had a memory of longer than 24 hours?