Xander Bogaerts Puts the Team on His Back (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
For the love of all that is holy… we needed that.
At this point, everyone knows that Xander Bogaerts has been fantastic during the 2015 season. He’s been on fire for the better part of two months but, perhaps more encouragingly, has been consistently good for the entirety of this calendar year. His defensive progression and clutch hitting have been well documented by the proprietors of this here blog. One of us, who tends to be less optimistic than the other but shall remain nameless, just said as recently as yesterday that The X was bound to come back down to earth and stop hitting in the clutch. The other just grinned and acknowledged the theoretical statistical validity of this claim, but chose to ignore it and believe in the superpowers of an extremely handsome and talented young man from Aruba.
Xander came to bat in the bottom of the 11th (already with two hits under his belt) with a runner on second and the game on the line. Once again in a crucial situation with two strikes Bogaerts came through, delivering a line drive single on a changeup well off the plate outside.
He may end up being the single fiber that tethers me to my sanity as the 2015 season plays out. Like an All Section High School Athlete transferring to prep school to squeeze out one last year of high school eligibility before accepting his fate to ride the pine at a D-2 state school, I’m going to hold on as tight as I can.
Xander ameliorated an otherwise regrettable situation wherein Frederick Porcello turned in arguably his best start of the year, but the Sox offense again failed to back a strong outing. (How has Chili Davis escaped blame in this whole charade? The offense, as a whole, has been abysmal. It must be his cool name).
| Pitchers | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | PC-ST | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Porcello | 7.0 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 105-71 | 5.51 |
<rant>I like Ryan Hanigan a lot. He gets on base all the time, and he is a good receiver. Most of the guys on the staff seem to have a lower ERA when throwing to him. Which makes it all the more baffling as to why he is prone to making mistakes that your average high school catcher would not. For instance, he doesn’t protect his throwing hand when catching. As a result he’s been hit on that hand by foul balls more times than I can count this year (math never came easily to me), and it caused him to miss significant time. What really drives me crazy though is the amount of balls in the dirt he casually tries to backhand with runners on base. Last night in the 2nd, Porcello threw a pitch that barely fell short of being able to be caught on the fly – the easiest kind of ball to block. Hanigan tried to backhand it and it skipped under his glove, moving the runner into scoring position with one out. A wild pitch by rule, but really a passed ball. Maybe I just got spoiled growing up watching Jason Varitek, who could’ve blocked that in his sleep. But the last thing this starting staff needs is someone making it even easier for the opposition to score.</rant>
Notes:
-I have Verlander on my fantasy team so this was about as perfect as the night could’ve gone for me.