I unfortunately didn’t get to catch most of today’s game, but I just wanted to point out that Coco went 3-for-5, stole a base, and scored 2 runs today.  I think this guy’s going to be very well recieved by Red Sox Nation, and make a real name for himself.  Loretta also looks like he’ll do good things for us.  The jury’s still out on Josh Bard and David Riske, the other aquisitions in the Coco trade.  I wouldn’t worry too much about Wake’s perfomance being indicative of bad things to come, though.

The 5-game opening day losing streak is officially over! The Sox hit the ground running today in a 7-3 victory over the Texas Rangers. Unfortunately, I only got to see the last 3 innings thanks to class. Some obvervations from those innings.

• Schilling looked pretty good, but not nearly as intense as I’ve seen him in the past. He wasn’t really “dominating,” at least in the 7th, but he still managed a 1-2-3 inning. Granted, it’s only the first game of the season. He’s only going to get better as the season goes on and that fire burns hotter.
• Papelbon had a solid 1-2-3 8th. Expect good things when he comes out of the pen.
• Foulke allowed one run in the 9th, but got hit pretty hard even on the outs (the run scored on a sac fly to deep center). You could argue that it would have been a scoreless inning if Stern plays the hit to left better, but it was a hard hit ball; I’ll attribute that one to Foulke. That being said, I’m still not worried about him getting back to form. As I said before, it’s just the first game of the season. Sure, the adrenaline is pumping and these games actually count, but you can’t expect some magical switch to turn on that wasn’t there this past weekend.
• I didn’t get to see much of his bat, but Coco made a heck of a catch in the 9th to turn what would have been a double into the aforementioned sac fly. (See here.)
• Lowell got his first homer over and done with. It’s still to early to tell if we have the ’04 Lowell or the ’05 one, but at least he doesn’t have that hanging over his head.

All-in-all a very solid start to the season. Here’s to a 3-game sweep and the death of my classes!