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 Pedroia, Betts, 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.