First things first. Last night the Red Sox celebrated the 40th anniversary of the 1975 pennant-winning season, and wore throwback uniforms in that team’s honor. What I’m going to say next may be shocking to some, but I thought the ’75 uniforms looked fantastic. High socks and red hats, I’m all about it. The only thing that looked a little … off … is the red band around the waist, but the added color is cool. It was weird that some of the squad was wearing the red, white, and blue socks and some were wearing solid red, but as long as the socks are high, I’m on board.
After dropping four in a row, it was a real breath of fresh air to have a starter turn in not just a quality start, but 7 innings of shutout ball. For once the pitching picked up the slack on a night when the offense struggled. I’ve been doing my best to avoid baseball clichés on this here blog of ours, but Porcello really did “scatter” the 8 singles he surrendered, and didn’t walk anyone. Frederick struck out 6, and thanks to back-to-back quality starts, is now sporting a respectable 4.38 ERA.
Ogando and Koji combined for two innings of relief to close out the game, but strangely, none of those outs came by way of the K.
Outside of the pitching staff, it was the Mookie Show 2.0. (The original Mookie Show obviously being the home opener.) In this one he would be personally responsible for both of the Red Sox runs, and turned in a nice play defensively doubling off Longoria in the 4th, helping Porcello get out of his only real hairy situation of the game.
Drew Smyly was cruising through the first 5 innings of the game, striking out 5 without allowing a hit. Then leading off the bottom of the 6th, he threw an 0-1 slider to Betts, who treated it like an old dirty rug.
Mookie would lead off again two innings later with similar results, this time on a first-pitch fastball that he took over the National League scoreboard portion of the Monster. He was smiling when he crossed the plate, and was rewarded with a big hug from Big Papi. What a feeling that must be.
Great call by Don, too: “Mookie Betts has a 2-0 lead over the Tampa Bay Rays!” His stats still aren’t where they were last year, but he’s certainly passing the eye test. Hopefully his numbers will soon start to reflect just how impressive he’s been so far.
Notes:
-On the last play of the game, Koji got Asdrubal Cabrera to ground out softly to Pedey, but not before Koji would make a lunging/diving/falling attempt to cut the ball off before it got past him. Everyone got a good chuckle out of that.
-Despite 16 combined hits and walks (a fairly average number for a MLB game), this one took just 2:26 to complete.
-For some reason the high red, white, and blue striped socks always remind me of Damon Buford even though I don’t think he wore his socks like that regularly.