Before we get into this, I gotta say that the Boston Globe dropped the ball with their “Lackey shellacked” headline this morning. Wouldn’t “shelLackeyed” have been way better? What? Don’t look at me like that.
Anyway, John Lackey was simply terrible last night, going down to his third straight defeat after allowing nine runs on nine hits and five walks. He’s now 2-5 with an 8.01 earned run average and has struck out only 19 batters while walking 18.
But more troubling than his performance was his postgame demeanor. His quote -- “everything in my life sucks right now” -- was rather jarring. Even more jarring was reading in the Globe this morning that Lackey’s wife is fighting breast cancer, which is something I hadn’t seen back in the spring when it was apparently first reported. So, yeah, the pitching issues are not the biggest thing going on in his life at the moment.
A later quote -- “I don’t know what the hell happened tonight. I threw the ball way better than last start. I don’t know ... I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I don’t know” -- makes you wonder if he should even be out there right now, because his head is clearly, and understandably, elsewhere.