Lorenzo Cain has a reputation as an excellent defensive center fielder. But he had himself a pretty tough Friday night against the Red Sox. It started harmlessly enough – Mookie Betts, the Sox’ first batter of the game, stretched a right-center single, fielded by Cain, into a double (go to 0:44 in this video to see it). Mookie was absolutely DIGGING for the extra base, and it’s not like Cain was dogging it, but it was an unusual double to start things off. But Betts was eventually stranded at third. No harm done.

Then, in the 2nd inning, after a 1-out Travis Shaw double, Rusney Castillo hit a pop-up to juuuuust the right spot between Cain and second baseman Omar Infante (2:14). Cain might have been able to make the play if Infante hadn’t been in the area, but it dropped for a base hit instead. Three pitches later, Blake Swihart lined a double to left field, scoring Shaw. Bizarrely, Castillo also scored on the play due to a lazy, errant throw from left fielder Paulo Orlando and some undisciplined backup procedures by Kansas City. Josh Rutledge and Betts both singled to bring Swihart around from second, and the Sox left the 2nd inning leading the Royals 3-0.

KC got a run back in the 4th, when Hanley Ramirez couldn’t cleanly handle an Eric Hosmer single that brought in Ben Zobrist. To Hanley’s credit, he looked more energetic than usual out there. Sometimes the ball just gets away from you.

Lorenzo Cain can attest to that. With 1 out in the 4th, Castillo hit a triple directly over Cain’s head in center (go to 5:33). Cain probably should have made the play – it looked like he was shying away from a potential collision with the wall. Instead, Swihart collected his 2nd RBI of the night on a bloop single to left center. Even worse (for Cain), Mookie Betts blooped another single, but his went to right-center. Perhaps Cain was trying to prevent another stretch double by Betts, or maybe he was just trying to do too much by catching it on the fly, but either way, he absolutely booted it, knocking the ball into right field with his glove. Swihart scored from first to give the Red Sox a 5-1 lead.

That lead shrunk to 5-2 in the 6th when Henry Owens left a meatball up in the zone for Alcides Escobar, who took it deep to center for his third home run of 2015. But Josh Rutledge, with perhaps his first meaningful contribution to this team, took Johnny Cueto deep himself, sending a bad cut fastball into the Monster seats. Rutledge is now 5-6 against Cueto in his career.

Rutledge’s home run was the 12th hit Cueto allowed on the night. He’d give up one more (a Pablo Sandoval double) and finish out the 6th before giving way to former Boston great Franklin Morales. The rest of the game passed by pretty much without incident, and the Red Sox took the second game of the series 7-2.

Notes:

1. Henry Owens had himself a great day and a great bounce-back start. The home run he gave up to Escobar was his only real mistake of the game. It was one of the best pitching performances by a Red Sox starter this year:

PITCHERS	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	ERA
Owens	8.0	4	2	1	1	4	1	4.50

His one walk was to the first batter of the game, Escobar, on four pitches.

 

2. Torey Lovullo showed some sort of supernatural prescience by inserting Jackie Bradley, Jr. into left field for Hanley Ramirez in the 8th inning. The second batter of the inning, Omar Infante, hit a line drive to shallow left field. Bradley got a late break on it in the rain at Fenway but, well, just add it to the highlight reel.

 

3. It has to be said: Sandoval’s been flashing some pretty nice glove work at third base recently.

 

4. John Farrell was back at Fenway Park today so that the Red Sox could take their team picture in front of the Green Monster.

 

5. The Red Sox are now 7 games behind the Angels for the second wild-card spot. Just sayin’.