Sinker: Lowe, Lowe, Lowe. Lowe’s pitching is like some sort of Biblical cycle: 7 years of feast, 7 years of famine. And his body language smacked of ‘01. Lowe looks like the kind of guy who can’t stop focusing on what’s going wrong. It’s like he’s a pitching savant: his sinker works, but he doesn’t know why, so he can’t adjust it accordingly. So maybe the solution is to restore him back to a Zen mood. Maybe instead of a chat on the mound, we need Francona to bring in one of new portable PlayStations. Damon can play him.
Tailor: Foulke being used the night before to extinguish a Rays rally was good, but how does one even know a rally’s going to be on? That’s an issue about using a relief ace the ‘ideal’ way to kill rallies - got to warm him up first. I suppose the Joe Torre tactic of improbably long mound chats is one way of doing so…
(For situations in which a relief ace is brought on in tie games - definitely, no question. Why let a statistic like saves get in the way of giving you a chance at winning?)