It has begun -- weekly update

Here's this week's updated stats on the pitching adventure that is the balance of the Red Sox season:

			Last appearance
Name	record	era	pi-k	innings	bb	k
Anthony Ranaudo	2-0	4.50	91-61	6.0	1	1
Allen Webster	3-1	4.79	85-56	6.0	3	2
Clay Buccholz	5-7	5.79	110-75	7.0	2	9
Rubby de la Rosa	4-4	3.79	89-53	4.0	4	2
Joe Kelly	2-3	4.67	91-49	4.0	6	3
Brandon Workman	1-5	4.31	96-61	5.1	2	5

Joe Kelly started off a little rough, but settled down in his outing against the Reds, a 3-2 win for the Sox on the strength of a Yoenis Cespedes home run. Cespedes hit the jack after being brushed back by Jonathan Broxton. Kelly also stole a base in that game...might be something fun to watch for in future interleague games with him on the mound.

Anthony Ranaudo got his second win with a 5-4 victory over the Reds that gave the Sox a 5-3 record on their road trip. Ranaudo wasn't overpowering, surrendering 2 homers and 4 runs in his six innings, but was bailed out by Mike Napoli's 2-run shot that sealed the deal.

Webster's start looked like it might devolve into a similar pattern as he walked the first two batters in the second inning, but the youngster managed to right himself and hang on for six fairly solid innings, though he did give up 4 runs. The guys had his back this time as they dropped a 7-run inning of small ball on the Astros to give Webster the win. Out in California, Jake Peavy is just throwing up his hands and wondering where that was all year during his starts.

Clay Buccholz had another quality start ruined as the bullpen blew the 3-2 lead he game them in extra innings in a 5-3 loss. Tough break but if there's silver lining, it's nice to see that Buccholz seems to have found his groove again after a tough comeback from nagging injuries earlier in the year.

de la Rosa went backwards in his last outing, lasting only 4 innings and leaving the Sox in a 6-3 hole that required a David Ortiz' 6 rbi night to get them out of and back into the win column with a 10-7 victory. With two 2-run shots in the game, Ortiz joins Ted Williams and Carl Yaztrezmski as the only Red Sox players with over 400 hrs in a Sox uniform (note to punkish Chris Archer -- yeah, Ortiz is bigger than the game. . .bigger than you'll ever be, that's for sure).

Joe Kelly had a disastrous home opener for the Sox as he got shelled in his four innings of work that left the team in a 7-1 they never climbed out of in their 8-1 loss. In truth, Kelly had some bad luck with a inning ending double play disallowed that resulted in a grand slam that pretty much took everything out of the team. The guys ended up splitting the series with the Astros, which seems appropriate -- two last place teams go 2-2 facing one another.

Tough to take anything much out of this week's work -- some good performances, some decent offense, and plenty of the bad play and bad luck that put these guys in the cellar in the first place. I'd like to see them finish up somewhere around .500 but at 11 games under, I just don't know. They'll need to find something at some point to turn things around   :-(