Look, are we doing a good job? Define “good.” Besides, you didn’t really want something hot off the presses for an embarrassing series-ending slaughter anyway. Frankly, I applaud myself for sticking with this game as much as I did. If you can’t already tell, this blog is going to be incredibly half-assed. It’s gonna be impressive. I’m just preparing you. Ready, go.

So I get home from dinner, and the Yankees are up 7-0. Sigh. Clay. How’d it happen? Walks, hits, an error. A bases-clearing double by A-Rod. Back-to-back homers. I’m not linking to any videos, no one wants to see that. That’s morbid.

During an intense, secreted-away discussion between Lancel and Cersei about their past sins, Bogaerts hit a double to left to shorten the lead to four runs, knocking in Napoli and Sandoval, two of the Sox’ better offensive performers on the night. Napoli had his first hit of the year in the 8th inning and walked twice, and Sandoval went 2-4.

Other offensive highlights:

– Hanley hit his third home run of the year on a breaking ball outside, taking it the opposite way to right center to make it 10-4. In the future though, let’s try to save those for when we’re not down by eight billion. He also had a sacrifice fly to make it 7-1. Hanley Ramirez: turning 7-run leads into 6-run leads, one at a time.

– …oh, are you still here? There weren’t any other offensive highlights. That was it.

On the other side of the ball, well, let’s see. Buchholz settled down for a little while. But by the time Jon Snow and Mance Rayder were having another intense discussion before Rayder’s inevitable execution, he was giving up four straight singles and a sacrifice fly in the 4th. Then Breslow came in, and he was a little wild (three walks) but effective, not letting anyone cross the plate over 1.2 innings.

Tommy Layne was up next, and he looked about as hittable as possible, giving up three singles, a walk, another single, and a sacrifice fly before Mookie bailed him out with an inning-ending double play on a fantastic diving catch. Weird play: Mookie’s already heading off the field as he flips it half-heartedly to second to double off Headley. Layne really might not be more than just a lefty specialist. Last year, he held lefties (like me! except I’m not really a lefty) to a .159 average, but righties hit .318 against him. The disparity is worse so far this year: lefties are hitting .200, but righties are hitting .429.

Elsewhere, Hanigan threw out Stephen Drew at second on a tough low pitch.

Mujica gave up another home run.

Sandy León played third base in the 8th inning! Who knew? Unfortunately, he didn’t get any chances to show off his hot corner skills.

I didn’t watch Anthony Varvaro pitch, but he gave us an inning of pretty clean relief in a situation of the lowest possible pressure. Good work!

What else…Brock Holt! Played some second base, hit a single in the 9th. Is now batting SEVEN FOURTEEN on the season. .714! I’m no mathemagician but I’m pretty sure that would be some sort of record. Get this man on the All-Star ballot!

Okay, are we done here? I think we’re done here.

Thanks to Friday’s 19-inning epic, the Red Sox found themselves in a potentially hazardous situation on Saturday. Games of that length always have the potential to screw up the bullpen, especially this early in the season, and with Joe Kelly coming back from a biceps injury, there was no way he was throwing more than 100 pitches yesterday. After playing 2.1 games worth of baseball on Friday night, it was imperative for Kelly to stretch those 100 pitches as far as possible.

Kelly was able to go 7 strong, saving the bullpen from back-to-back extended appearances within a matter of hours. It’s difficult to overstate how important that is. An extra inning night game followed by a day game, combined with a short outing by your starter, can negatively affect your bullpen for weeks or months at a time (sometimes the whole season). This has a much greater effect on the rest of the year than any other early season event or individual performance. In recent years managers have even resorted to sticking position players on the mound in competitive 9-inning ballgames in April and May to save their bullpen for the long haul.

Quick Tangent: Having a guy like Steven Wright at the back end of the pen is a huge luxury. Even though he got sent down to make room for Kelly, and even though he almost singlehandedly drove Lefty to an early grave Friday night/early Saturday morning, he did the pitching staff a huge service by going five of the ten extra frames.

I was flying back to Boston during this one, so I wasn’t able to watch it live (me and Lefty are really on fire here). But from what I saw Kelly looked sharp, having good bite to his slider and a lively 2-seamer. He topped out at 98 MPH on the gun, which is not bad for someone making his first start since mid-March due to an injury to his pitching arm. The result was allowing 1 run on only 1 hit, walking 2, and striking out a career-high 8 men on 93 pitches. After his control briefly abandoned him in the 2nd inning, Joe settled into a nice little groove, setting down 17 straight Yankees (actually I shouldn’t assume, maybe some of them are gay. Or whatever this is.) before exiting.

As expected, Brock Holt and Daniel Nava have been carrying the offensive load for this otherwise light-hitting Sox team. The pair combined to go 6 for 8, with 5 RBIs, 2 runs, a walk, and didn’t leave anyone on base. Really though, this is the beauty of being so deep at every position. They rested some regulars, and Ortiz, Napoli, Sandoval, and Craig combined to go 1-18, but they tied a season-high by putting up 8 runs. The Red Sox were definitely the beneficiaries of some real. Shoddy. Yankees. Defense, but I’ll take it.

Notes:

-It’s early, but it looks like it’s going to be a long season for the Yankees. While this makes me somewhat happy, I really miss the heated rivalry of the late 90s/early 00s.

-Joe Kelly desperately needs a nickname. I’m thinking something old-school like “Pumpsie” since he’s pumping the strike zone with high-octane heat. Let’s try and top that. Any suggestions?

-It was good to see Pedey smoke a double after bouncing into a pair of frustrating double plays earlier in the game.

-The 6-12th rounds of the Garcia-Peterson fight were awesome.

I’m gonna try to keep this short and sweet, because I’ve got a wedding to go to and I’m completely exhausted. I’m going to reference my notes a lot, because gimme a break, I watched more than two games’ worth of baseball and now I have to write comprehensively about it? I AM ONLY ONE MAN.

Let’s start things off in the sixth: Daniel Nava played great in the first nine innings of this one, going 2-3 and getting hit by a pitch. One of those two hits came here, with a grounder through the right side knocking in Pablo Sandoval and Mike Napoli, who’d both previously advanced to 2nd and 3rd on a wild pitch by Eovaldi.

In the bottom half of the inning though, Wade Miley ran into trouble for the first time and got pulled in favor of Robbie Ross, Jr. after walking two batters and giving up a hit to two others. With one run in, one out, and the bases loaded, Ross came in and got two outs, one of them a sacrifice fly from McCann.

In the 8th, Brett Gardner got a one-out single off Junichi Tazawa, but Sandy León caught the speedster stealing with an absolutely perfect throw. León looked solid in his first start for the Sox, also laying down a solid (if ultimately meaningless) sacrifice bunt in the top of the 13th inning.

Edward Mujica blew the save with two outs in the ninth, an event that would ruin my evening completely. Headley took him deep. I don’t even want to think about it. We know what Mujica is, yes? His stuff just isn’t good enough for him to be a closer…unless it is sometimes.

Since I’m pressed for time and the next game starts in…a half hour, I’m going to revert to my scribbled extra inning notes, with a little extra commentary:

1. Are we sure Mike Napoli’s sleep apnea getting cured was a good thing? He was 0-8 with a walk, and he had a golden sombrero in extra innings alone. I know it’s great that he’s dreaming again and everything, but is it possible that his dreams are now CRAZY INTENSE because he hasn’t had any in so long? Poor guy probably wakes up 8 times a night drenched in sweat because of the hellborne nightmares he’s having, and doesn’t want to tell anyone ’cause he’s embarrassed.

2. “Bad K by Mookie Betts in 13th (all swinging) and 15th (looked twice, then swinging), both with runner in scoring position. Did it again in 17th.” I think that says it all. Mookie’s playing fine, but striking out three times with a chance to put your team ahead with a single, twice to end the inning is a tough look when I am very tired and am getting viscerally angry with every Red Sox failure.

3. David Ortiz is the man.

4. Some lights went out in the 12th. I came pretty close to falling asleep at this point.

5. That catch Hanley Ramirez made to end the 12th inning was incredibly Manny-esque, just stumbling around slowly, making it as difficult as possible. But also simultaneously impressive. And as Righty pointed out, they both have the same last name! Hmmmmmm….

6. Dustin Pedroia biffed a double play in the 14th. It didn’t end up mattering, as Drew flew out to right to end the inning, but still, Laser Show hasn’t exactly been lights out defensively so far. Then again, I spent 7 hours sitting in front of a TV/radio last night, so I feel a little hypocritical calling anyone out for athletic lapses. Plus, he ended up making up for it later.

7. A-Rod’s swing is still beautiful. That double in the 11th…what a bastard.

8. The leads we surrendered…they happened. Steven Wright gave up a home run to Teixeira that I felt coming. It happened too many times with Wakefield to ever feel comfortable with a one-run lead being protected by a knuckleballer.

9. Okay, Betts made up for the strikeouts with a sacrifice fly. Fine.

10. Play of the year so far.

The Red Sox took the last game of the opening series of the 2015 campaign in ugly, yet effective fashion. It was 42 degrees in Philly at first pitch, and most of the players looked like they were headed to a Pats home game in mid-December, not taking the field for a regular season game. When Pedroia grounded out to short in the bottom of the first, I couldn’t tell if it was Freddy Galvis or Moses from Attack the Block who fielded the ball.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Galvis. pic.twitter.com/ejcgdZiSFl

— Eric Chesterton (@CF_Larue) April 9, 2015

Before we go any further, I need to point out that I watched this game at a bar in Austin, so if I get any of the details wrong, blame it on the overattentive waitresses (no, I don’t need any more fried pickles, I just finished the first 18 you brought me) or the guy from Vermont who shot the breeze with me while he was waiting for his buddy to show up. It was better than Glansberging, but I missed some plays as a result. Also I was trying to watch the Bruins at the same time (honestly, what the hell guys).

Anyway, all of the scoring in this one came in an uncomely 3rd inning, starting with the Red Sox’ 6 spot in the top half of the frame. All the “action” came with two outs, and it was one of the lamest rallies you’ll ever see. Here’s how it went down:

1. Ortiz pulls one weakly to the right side, but it gets deep into the shift, and he beats the throw from Utley. Infield single.
2. Hanley hits a comebacker that Phillies starter David Buchanan stabs at, knocking it over his head onto the grass behind him. Instead of picking it up and pocketing it, he throws off-balance to first, missing Ryan Howard. Infield single and the runners advance on the error.
3. Panda walks.
4. Victorino hits a grounder to deep third. Cody Asche makes a backhand stop, looks at second, then tries to throw the Flyin’ Hawaiian out at first. No chance. Infield single, Ortiz scores
5. Hanigan walks with the bases loaded, Hanley scores.
6. With the bases still drunk, Xander hits a high looper down the right field line that drops in front of Francoeur, hitting the lip of grass where it borders the dirt surrounding the foul line. It squirts by Frenchy, all three baserunners score, Xander ends up at third with a triple.
7. The pitcher Justin Masterson hits a line drive up the middle, Xander scores from third. This was by far the hardest hit ball of the sequence (can’t say of the inning because Mookie was robbed by Ruf to lead off the inning, who snagged a screamer an inch off the grass).

After being spotted six runs, you would hope your pitcher would respond by challenging the opposing hitters and throwing up a zero. Alas, Masterson allowed an infield single, a walk, uncorked a wild pitch, another walk, and then a clean single, allowing the Phils to get two runs right back. This one bad inning aside, Masterson pitched a good game, allowing only one other hit while striking out seven, and true to form, induced seven groundouts and only one flyout. I don’t remember his slider being so sharp on his first go-round with the Sox; it really compliments his sinker (like, Slider: “Hey Sinker, I love your shoes!” Sinker: “Thanks! I got them from DSW.”)

Notes:

–Joe Kelly‘s biceps tendinitis has healed well enough for him to start on Saturday versus the Yankees, but I wouldn’t expect him to pitch deep into the game.

-Bogaerts had a great game, reaching base all 5 times he was up. Sometimes all it takes is a blooper and a bleeder to get a guy going and that may have been the case with Xander. His final hit of the night came on an outside pitch, which he drove to right field with authority.

-Sox are 2-0 when I recap and winless when Lefty recaps.