John_Lackey's Blog

We have Detroit in town for a two game set starting tonight. To prepare, our entire pitching staff meets together before the start of every series to go through the lineup we're about to face. We just finished our meeting about the Tigers. They have a tough lineup from top to bottom. Guillen, Polanco, Ordonez and Sheffield are always tough outs. We have a meeting room, it's like a board room with a big table in the middle. Our pitching coach, Mike Butcher, sits at the head of the table and leads the discussion. We go through every player on the roster, watch video of them and talk about their tendencies and strengths. While the video is playing, Mike reads the scouting report. These meetings usually last around 30 minutes. As a pitcher, what you really want to know is who's hot and what each guy has been doing lately. Polanco, for instance is hitting the ball extremely well and several of their guys have played really well against us in the past. These meetings give you a sense of players you may want to pitch around and just as importantly, who to really go after.

It's big for us to get Bartolo Colon back. We're talking about a Cy Young Award winner. Two years ago he was the best in the league. He adds depth to our rotation. When you have five solid starters, you have a chance to win every night. Let's face it, good pitching is what makes you win in the long run. Bart is a great dude to have around too. He's quiet and goes about his business. He's a pro. He's a lot like Vlad. They are superstar guys, but don't act like it. Bart's been out for almost a year. He had 10 starts at the beginning of last season and pitched hurt when he was in there. Until last night, we hadn't seen him since the end of spring training because he's been pitching rehab. We had heard he was hitting 95 on the gun in the minors, so hopefully he's all the way back, completely healthy. It looked like it last night.

I'm fired up to be back on the west coast. It's been a brutal trip. The weather was crappy back east and we've been getting our butts kicked. It's just been a crappy trip. We had to go to Milwaukee last week to play Cleveland. I've never heard of anything like that. It was snowing in Milwaukee too, a lot. I'm a Texas guy. I've never seen it come down like that. The Brewers organization treated us really well though. It was first class all the way and the fans there were incredible. There were a bunch of Cleveland fans there because it's not that far from Milwaukee, but it was awesome to see so many people show up just to watch pro baseball. There were 20,000 people there every day. It was like a Wisconsin Badgers football crowd. At one point they were doing the wave, first in slow motion then faster and then reversing it. Badger fans like their football and their drinking. It wasn't your normal baseball crowd, but it was great. Not sure I'll see anything like that again.