A lot of good things happened in this game, but as has been the case for most of 2015 the desired result wasn’t there. Every starter had a hit except for Sandy Leon and Rusney Castillo, but Rusney was squaring the ball up and had a homer taken away by Joey Bats (who now, by the way, follows @AndRighty).
But this team found another way to come up a play or two short of victory. It’s hard for me to be as upset about yesterday as Lefty was about Friday night’s game because I was at the second half of this game, sitting about 8 rows from the field between home plate and the Red Sox dugout with my sister, my brother-in-law, and my baby niece. It was a great day to be at the ballpark.
That being said, losing another winnable game is frustrating as hell.
Clay Buchholz got the start and put the Red Sox in an early hole, giving up a 3 spot in the top of the second. But the offense would get the Sox back in the game – they went into the 4th inning down 4-0 and came out of it down 4-3, thanks to RBI singles by Xander and Panda, and some Dickey knuckleballs that got past Russell Martin.
Buchholz settled down and turned in a decent outing.
| Pitchers | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buchholz | 6.0 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 4.22 |
Papi led off the bottom of the sixth with a solo blast to tie the game at four.
With one out in the bottom of the seventh Pedey, Holt, and Ramirez would hit back-to-back-to-back singles, bringing up Ortiz with the bases loaded. After taking ball one he took a vicious hack at a hittable fastball, trying to give the Red Sox a four run lead with one swing. He missed, and eventually would strike out. Xander would follow and strike out on three pitches. You’d think with one out and needing only one run to take the lead Ortiz would have a different approach, trying only to hit a fly ball or even a single with the first hittable pitch he saw.
That would be the last threat the offense mounted on the day. The Red Sox bullpen pitched well (a day too late), so the game would remain tied up until the 11th inning when Matt Barnes surrendered a solo homerun to Russell Martin. This came a day after Matt Barnes gave up 3 runs without recording an out, opening up the floodgates and letting the Blue Jays back in a game that appeared to be well in hand. To be fair, Barnes had been very good this season up until Friday night, and pitched a scoreless tenth yesterday, but you’d like to see Farrell stay away from him if at all possible the day after such a forgettable performance.
Notes:
-Sandoval left the game with a quad injury and is day-to-day.
–Mookie will miss time after crashing face-first into the wall on Friday night.
-If this isn’t the low point of 2015, we’re in for a long summer.
-I’m still blogging one-handed/with Siri. It’s harder to be interesting, funny, or witty (all three trademarks of Righty’s writing, obviously) with this setup. I’ll try and pick it up for the good of the team. And to impress Joey Bats.