Five games down ... 157 to go

First blog of the new season. Sorry about the delay. Some observations from the first week ...

• Brad Penny is a huge man. I'm not saying he has a Schilling-esque belly, he is just big.
• The bullpen is the best in baseball. Delcarmen, Lopez,Okijima, Masterson, Ramirez, Saito and Papelbon should be able to both hold leads and keep the Sox in games.
• The starting rotation of Beckett, Lester, Dice-K, Wakefield, and Penny with Buchholz and Smoltz in reserve is very good. Theo did a nice job here.
• Why can't Dice-K pitch for the Sox like he does for Japan in the WBC?
• Opening Day at Fenway featured the cool sight of the players walking down to the field from the aisles. Very nice touch by management. Let's introduce the visiting Yankees the same way.
• Something seems wrong with big #34 of the Sox. Pitchers are feeding him some mistakes and he is missing them. Let's hope that it is just a timing thing. Youk batting third may not be far away.
• The new / retro, gray, away jerseys are going to take some getting used to. The big red socks on the sleeve seem out of place.
• I know Wake eats up innings and can go on some serious streaks but I personally would rather see Buchholz or even Bowden in there. He still fools people but he also comes in flat alot and batters eat that stuff up.
• The Rays and Yanks scare me. Both teams are very talented. Consider how bad the AL Central is this year (Royals, Twins, ChiSox, Indians and Tigers oh my) and the lack of a quality team to battle the Angels in the AL West. My big worry is that the triumvirate of Big AL East teams beat up on each other over the course of 36 games against each other.