Imagine how far it would have gone if he'd used TWO arms. (ESPN Photo)
Righty’s right. I was in New Hampshire, and we definitely don’t have Internet. We don’t have cell phone service either. My plan had been to venture out to find some on the 4th to do some writing, but come on. You weren’t gonna read it anyway. Let’s be honest. So I’m gonna break down yesterday’s game and maybe if you’re lucky I’ll post a little something about Friday’s game too. Hey, five games til the All-Star break!
The Sox came back to win the game and the series on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Boston. The scoring got started in the 2nd inning, after Hanley Ramirez got excited and was caught trying to go from first to third on a Pablo Sandoval single. Victorino flied out, but De Aza drew a walk and Ryan Hanigan, perhaps inspired by Sandy León’s 3-4 performance on Saturday, drove in Sandoval with a clean single to right field on a full count.
Eduardo Rodriguez only gave up one run on the day, but like his opponent Lance McCullers, labored through five innings and 101 pitches (seriously, that was what they both ended up with). The lone Astros run, which tied the game in the 4th, came by way of a pretty standard walk, single, and single to drive in the runner on second.
With the game still tied in the 6th, the Astros brought in their best reliever, Will Harris, he of the 0.93 ERA through 38.2 innings. This game wouldn’t hurt his ERA, but neither was he particularly effective. After Hanley led off by reaching on an error by Puerto Rican phenom shortstop Carlos Correa, Pablo Sandoval sliced a double into the left field corner, where Evan Gattis had enough trouble fielding the ball to let Ramirez score.
Hanigan came through again with two outs to get Sandoval home from third, and the Sox left the inning up 3-1.
But after a clean 6th inning in relief of Rodriguez, Alexi Ogando ran into trouble in the 7th. With his ERA under 3.00 for the first time since May 1 after a sterling June (1.84 ERA), he found himself over the 3.00 mark once again after back-to-back two-out home runs into the Monster by Correa and Gattis. Correa’s came with Jose Altuve on second base, and the Sox found themselves down by a run going into the bottom of the 7th. 4-3, Astros.
Harris got Xander Bogaerts looking to start the 7th, but got pulled so the lefty Tony Sipp could face David Ortiz, who finally drew a walk after 11 pitches. And then Hanley did this:
5-4, Red Sox. The remainder of the game passed by fairly uneventfully. Tazawa got a hold, Uehara got the save. Colby Rasmus tried bunting Preston Tucker to second base (after a Buckner-esque error by Brock Holt at second base) with two strikes and biffed it. If I have any other thoughts on this one, I might include them in the breakdown of Friday’s game, but for now this’ll have to do.