Month: May 2015

Sox Lose 6-4, Get Swept by Twins

Shucks. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

Shucks. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

Rick Porcello got the bump in this one and struggled for his second consecutive outing, surrendering 6 earned runs on 7 hits, walking 2, striking out 2, and giving up 2 homeruns. The gopher ball continued to be the Achilles Heel for Red Sox pitching, as Freddie pitched pretty well outside of those two mistakes. Well maybe it’s not the Achilles Heel. After all, Achilles had two heels (that’s a guess, I never met the guy) and the problems with the starters have been manifold. In any case, the Sox’ staff have now surrendered 52 long balls, second most in the AL.

Four runs may seem like a decent output, and for May it’s a veritable outburst, but the total is somewhat misleading. The offense in this game was Dustin Pedroia. He hit a pair of two-run homers on inside fastballs, giving him seven on the year, which matches his total from last year. Both times Phil Hughes missed his spot badly, and Pedey took advantage.

La luna indeed.

After Sunset’s second tater (Pedey seemed determined to singlehandedly keep the Red Sox in the game), Porcello had a shutdown inning in the bottom half of the 5th. But a few Red Sox hitters not named Pedrioa couldn’t string anything together in the 6th, and in the bottom half of that frame Porcello would give up his second dinger of the game, killing any momentum that Boston had gained from Dustin’s herculean effort.

In 2013 it was almost as if you could feel the late-inning magic coming before it happened. This year I don’t remember feeling that way in a close game in the late innings since mid-April. Maybe that feeling is just confidence in your offense? That’s feeling seems pretty foreign right now too. Ramirez, Ortiz, Napoli, and Bogaerts (the 4 through 7 batters) combined to go 0 for 15.

Notes:

-Don and Jerry had a great moment. Don was talking about Dozier having good power for a leadoff hitter, which is somewhat rare. This followed:

Jerry: What are you talking about? I batted leadoff and I had seven.
Don: Yeah in your whole career.
Jerry: Exactly.
*Chuckles*

Eduardo Rodriguez will get the start tonight in Texas. John Farrell said that the Red Sox will use a 6-man rotation for one turn and that Rodriguez will go back to Pawtucket after his start. Righty says that this is an audition and Joe Kelly is officially on notice.

Sandoval had another hit batting lefty against a lefty and is now 3 for 3 in that scenario this season.

Xander made a hell of a play in the hole on a Joe Mauer grounder to end the bottom of the first.

-As I mentioned earlier this year, Lefty has a reputation amongst our friends as being a sports jinx. So why he thought it was a good idea to send this tweet I’ll never know:


I was going to center the whole recap around this, since the perfect game and 2-0 lead vanished faster than a Miami Heat fan leaving a close playoff game in the 4th quarter, but he’s a little sensitive about being a jinx so I laid off.

Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One Before: The Sox Have No Hitting

Good job, good effort. (MLB Photo)

For the 5th time in the month of May, the Sox held their opponent to 3 runs or less and still managed to lose, dropping this one to the Twins, 2-1. Clay Buchholz wasn’t dominant, but he was good for someone who clearly didn’t have his best stuff (only two strikeouts on the night) and very efficient. True, his efficiency was probably helped out a bit by Twins hitters jumping all over early pitches, thinking they could drive them, but that’s not a bad strategy as long as they don’t ACTUALLY drive anything.

The likely reason they felt they could hammer Clay’s stuff was the 1st inning, in which he gave up three hard-hit doubles (to left, to right, and to left), allowing two runs to score in the process. However, for the rest of the game, Minnesota advanced two runners to third base but no further, and Buchholz ended up going 7 1/3 innings, giving up only 4 hits from the second to the eighth. This seemed a minor miracle from my couch, as he continually left pitches up in the zone or, perhaps to his benefit, HIGHER than the zone, missing very badly when he missed.

He was helped out by his defense, especially Rusney Castillo in right field. Castillo twice took away potential doubles from Kurt Suzuki, including a risky but successful but play in the bottom of the eighth inning to bail out Alexi Ogando – Joe Mauer would likely have scored from first if the ball had gotten past Castillo. Suzuki was also semi-robbed by Hanley Ramirez in left on a ball that nearly sailed over Hanley’s head in the 4th inning.

On the other side of the ball, well, as usual, there isn’t much to say. If you’re looking for a recap of repeated ineptitude, you’ve come to the right place. The Sox got their sole run of the game from a one-out double by David Ortiz, the result of a great at-bat in which he fouled off a couple pitches with two strikes on him. This will surprise no one, but that was Boston’s only extra-base hit of the night. Mike Napoli, bless him, drove in Big Papi after fouling off a couple two-strike pitches himself with a broken bat single to left.

The Red Sox’ only other real opportunity came with 2 outs in the top of the 8th inning, after Castillo grounded out back to Blaine Boyer on Boyer’s first pitch of the night, relieving Mike Pelfrey after seven innings of seemingly hittable (but ultimately excellent) work. I’ll just say that hitting a nubber on a outside breaking ball with an empty count and no outs with your team down by one run late in a game is the work of a young player. Sandy León had his first multi-hit game since April 13, so you couldn’t really fault him tonight, but grounded out to third here to set the stage for Dustin Pedroia.

Pedroia fouled off a couple pitches with two strikes, then grounded one pretty slowly right up the middle to get on first. Pedroia advanced to second on a wild pitch by Boyer that also drove the count full to Mookie Betts, and Mookie walked two pitches later. The Twins brought in their closer, the lefty Glen Perkins, to face Pablo Sandoval, batting in the three hole, and hitting lefty against a lefty again. He loaded the bases with an infield single but couldn’t bring home Pedroia, as second baseman Brian Dozier made a nice play to prevent the run scoring.

This brought up Hanley Ramirez, who logic would dictate I would want to see in this situation, but I really didn’t. He vindicated my lack of faith with a line drive/fly ball out to right field. I just feel like he’s been doing that a lot: a lot of pretty well-hit but easily handled balls. They seem like lazy flies compared to what he’s capable of. Where has the power gone? As the Twins’ broadcast team said, “The old sacrifice fly with two outs and the bases loaded, gotta love it.”

And that was pretty much it.

Notes:

 

Red Sox Drop Memorial Day Matinée, 7-2

Goddamn Plouffe (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

Goddamn Plouffe! (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

The Red Sox played yesterday afternoon at beautiful Target Field in Minneapolis, and were out of the game practically before it began. Joe Kelly gave up one run in the first and six in the second, and the Red Sox offense could only patch together two runs off of Twins pitching. After taking consecutive feel-good games from the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of the United States of America, this one was a bit of a shock to the system.

Now, I’ve been watching baseball for a long time and I realize that these types of games will happen every once in awhile, but when the cause of the loss is part of a bigger, reoccurring problem, it tends to stick in your craw more than it would otherwise (in 2013, for example).

Pumpsie was having trouble with his location, and the big blow was a 3-run homer surrendered to Trevor Plouffe (that’s a top-5 name in baseball) on a center-cut 3-2 slider. Even when he’s struggling, Kelly always maddeningly seems like he’s pitching well and is a pitch or a bounce away from having a completely different outing. Early in the 2nd, Eddie Rosario had an RBI single on a pitch that was at least 6 inches off the plate outside. One batter before the Plouffe homerun, Kelly threw a 3-2 fastball to Joe Mauer that could’ve gone either way, but was ruled a ball by C.B. Bucknor, who in the humble opinion of this blogger is the worst balls-and-strikes ump in the game. Had it been strike three Joe would’ve been out of the inning without any further damage.

Alas, Kelly’s final line:

Pitchers IP  H  R ER BB SO HR ERA
Kelly (L, 1-4) 1.2 8 7 7 1 0 1 6.24

Matt Barnes did his mates a solid and pitched 3.1 innings of scoreless relief. Now that Steven Wright is our ace, it looks like Barnes will inherit the role of long reliever for the time being. If he keeps pitching this well, he might become too valuable to be an innings-eater.

The offense had 8 hits (two apiece for PedroiaBetts, and Napoli, whose bat continues to burn hotter than 1,000 suns), but again couldn’t get them when it counted, going 1 for 8 with RISP. Mookie’s 8th inning double was the only extra-base hit of the day for the Sox.

Notes:

-Guess what? Pedroia made another Gold Glove play at second, saving a run. Getting to watch him play second base every night is like watching the sunset every night. You know you can’t realistically expect every night to live up to your memory, and each is night is different, but on most nights of the week there will be a display equally as impressive and beautiful as the the most breathtaking one you can remember. *Cough* I mean that play was sick!

Papi is in a bit of a slump. He went 0 for 4 yesterday and is now hitting just .186 over his last 11 games, although he does have two homers in that time.

Heath Hembree went an inning in relief without surrendering a run, lowering his ERA to 23.14.

Napoli Cracks the Mendoza Line

Napoli, so hot right now. Napoli. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

Mike Napoli continues to provide the offense and the pitching continues to be solid (excepting that ugly Porcello start the other night). The Sox came away with the victory and the series yesterday afternoon, responding with two wins in a row after a 1-4 skid.

Wade Miley started the game with 4.2 perfect innings, but no strikeouts. He lost the perfect game and no-hitter in quick succession, giving up a walk and a single with two outs in the 5th, but got out of the inning by hustling over to first to cover for a ground ball hit to Napoli.

After notching his first strikeout of the night to start the sixth, he gave up a single and a Mike Trout double hit hard down the left field line to score Erick Aybar and make it 3-1, Red Sox.

Boston had gotten its runs two ways:

1. A home run by Napoli. This one was to dead center and still about ten rows deep. The decision to move Xander Bogaerts up in the batting order is paying dividends so far, as he went 4-4 and would get knocked in by Napoli twice in this game. Napoli, by the way, is now above the Mendoza line for the first time this year. Three cheers for small victories!

2. Boston manufactured a run in the bottom of the 5th, just before Trout hit his RBI double. Brock Holt hit a ground-rule double into the triangle in center field. Sandy León laid down a sacrifice bunt to move him to third (León’s gotta be one of the league leaders in sacrifice bunts at this point…never mind, he only has three. Huh.) and Pedroia hit a sacrifice fly to Trout in center to score Holt.

The Angels wouldn’t score again, with only one baserunner after Trout’s double. This came in the 8th inning on a ball hit sharply and directly at Brock Holt playing the hot corner, catching him on his glove wrist and deflecting into left field. He needed a minute or two to compose himself, but came back strong to turn two on the next batter, Aybar, and end the inning. A returning Pablo Sandoval did pinch hit for him in the bottom half of the 8th, though, so it’s something to keep an eye on.

The Angels had escaped from a similar predicament in the 6th inning. With two outs, Bogaerts hit a double down the left field line, and Hector Santiago intentionally walked Napoli. Is it possible he was lost in thought about his hitting resurgence, and how it earned him his first intentional walk of 2015, over at first base? Whatever was going through his head, he was staring straight out at second base and let Albert Pujols sneak behind him. Santiago was able to pick him off pretty easily with a neat overhead pinpoint throw.

The Sox added some insurance in the bottom of the 8th with a near-home run/actual double by Napoli that brought in both Hanley and Xander, both of whom had singled. Sandoval then got a single batting from the lefty side against a lefty (!) to bring in Napoli, and thus the scoring would end.

Koji came in for the 9th for his second consecutive scoreless non-save situation appearance. And that’s all she wrote.