A Player's Manager

There has been a lot of discussiong this morning about the way it appeared Tito "mailed it in" yesterday against the A's. Resting Varitek, sitting Gonzalez, and calling in Van Buren all appeared (in the minds of some fans) to indicate no real desire to grab this, the last game of the road trip, by the throat. As a result, we lost a game in the standings to the Yankees, and now come home to face the warming Angels tomorrow night.

Here's the fact of the matter: you can't accuse Francona of throwing in the towel. Sure, they have a day off today, but it's hard to argue that consecutive rest days for Varitek's knees aren't going to pay dividends in September. Van Buren pitcher reasonably well, and Cora just did his thing. We lost a game, yea, but remember:

We're still in first place.