I dunno, I just thought this was a cool picture. (MLB Photo)

First, a little transaction analysis. As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Pablo Sandoval sat out last night’s game for liking pictures on Instagram during Wednesday’s game. Unfortunately, with Dustin Pedroia still sitting out with a knee injury, the Sox don’t exactly have a plethora of infielders waiting to jump in. In fact, the only option they really had was to bring Hanley in from left field for the night. Faced with that reality, whoever’s in charge of making those decisions (Cherington, I presume?) decided to call up Travis Shaw, the corner infielder from Pawtucket. For that to happen, though, Heath Hembree, he of the 8.53 ERA and five consecutive scoreless innings, had to be sent to the 15-day DL with “right shoulder inflammation.” Sounds like a load of codswallop to me.

At the beginning of the week, both Shaw (having been called up when Matt Barnes was sent down) and Jeff Bianchi had been on the active roster, but both were sent down to AAA in order to recall Robbie Ross, Jr. and activate Craig Breslow from the DL. I don’t know if I really have a point here, other than to note that it looks like the Sox were forced to game the system with Hembree’s DL stint. It’s not Wei-Yin Chen’s situation, but it’s something. Hopefully Breslow and Ross were worth it. At any rate, Shaw is now 0-7 in the majors this year, but he did make this play.

For the first three innings, the Red Sox and Braves traded unproductive innings. Actually, Boston went down in order. But Brock Holt, batting leadoff in Pedroia’s place, led off the 4th with his second triple in three games, and with one out, Big Papi (playing 1st base last night) hit the ball to the right side of the infield to drive Holt in to make it 1-0.

Give the Sox credit. They eventually got to a very good pitcher in Shelby Miller, not through any particularly explosive offense but by keeping up continuous pressure. After three consecutive singles to start the 6th inning, Ramirez grounded into a bases-loaded double play to plate an insurance run through non-ideal means. But the bottom half of the order didn’t roll over and die with two outs – Bogaerts drove in Betts with another single and hustled from first base to score on Alejandro De Aza’s double, forcing Miller out of the game.

Meanwhile, Buchholz, who’d been cruising to this point, gave up a single and a walk with 2 outs in the bottom half of the inning. He then forced the Braves into two consecutive ground balls to the mound, but unluckily, the first one was a high chopper that left Clay with no play, and the second one, well…he managed to give up two runs on that one. Great ERA preservation move though.

Like Bogaerts in the previous inning, Holt managed to score from first on a double in the top of the 7th. Speed really does kill sometimes.

Tommy Layne came in for the hold (probably a combination of Tazawa’s workload and effectiveness kept him out) and Koji came in for a clean save. Well done boys. But you’re gonna have to play like that for a long time if you even want to scrape .500 again.

Notes:

• Sandy Leon received the first intentional walk of his major league career, bringing Buchholz to the plate in the 5th.
• Shades of Pedey.