Pumpsie deals (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)
Let’s dive right in. Joe Kelly started this one and was in trouble from the jump. As usual, his fastball was in the upper 90s, and when he located his pitches the Yankees hitters were reluctant to even swing at Pumpsie’s heat, much less square it up. Kelly is averaging 96 MPH on his pitches, the highest for a starter in the majors. However, location and off-speed stuff would prove to be a problem. Teixeira hit a two-run home run on a slider in the first inning, and Beltran would have a RBI double in the 3rd on a changeup. The other two runs came on an RBI double by McCann, also in the third, but on a poorly located two-seam fastball.
On the ESPN broadcast, Curt Schilling kept lamenting the fact that Kelly throws a 2-seam and a 4-seam fastball. His logic was that a) he throws hard enough that he doesn’t need the added movement that a two-seamer brings and b) with more repetitions throwing the 4-seamer he’ll be able to locate it better. I’m not going to pretend to know more about pitching than Curt, but throwing 97 with movement is really, really hard to hit; I think it’s worth the effort to keep working on that pitch. Plus Kelly’s best pitches in this game were two-seamers that had some hair on them. That being said, pitch location continues to be an issue for Kelly, so maybe Schilling was right after all.
| Boston | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kelly, J (L, 1-1) | 4.2 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 5.72 |
After an ineffective outing from Craig Breslow, in which he gave up two singles, a three-run home run to Brett Gardner, and retired no one, the score sat at 8-0 heading into the bottom of the 6th. In that inning Swihart lined out, Mookie popped out, and it looked like the Red Sox might roll over. Then Pedey singled, Papi doubled, Hanley got hit by a pitch (and was NOT pleased), Panda singled, and Napoli hit a three-run homer capping an exciting five-run two-out rally. Nava would walk and Xander would hit an infield single, but Swihart would strike out to end the inning. The lead was now 8-5 Yankees. The Red Sox have scored almost half of their runs this year (46%) with two dead.
The Sox would make more noise in the later innings, getting a man on in the 8th, and would even bring the game winning run to the plate in the bottom of the 9th in the person of David Ortiz, but Papi lined out to Jacoby to end the game with the bases loaded. It was encouraging to see the bats come alive in the second half of this one, but they should’ve learned their lesson from JoJo:
Notes:
–Dalier Hinojosa made his Major League debut with runners on first and third with one out in the top of the 8th in a 3 run game against the Yankees, and facing Alex Rodriguez. He struck out A-Rod, walked Tex, and got McCann to fly out. Welcome to the show, kid. (He’s actually 29 but “welcome to the show, sir” doesn’t have the desired effect). He’d go an inning and two-thirds, striking out 2, and walking 3, but didn’t allow a hit or a run.
-Tim Kurkjian is such an adorable baseball nerd.