Sox Win Behind Xander’s Slam

Posted on September 22, 2015 in Game Recap

I’ll say it again: has a last-place* team ever been this much fun to watch?

Let’s get right to it. With two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the 8th, the Red Sox were trailing the Rays 6-4. Jackie Bradley Jr. got hit by a pitch, Mookie singled, and Pedroia singled to shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera, who inexplicably elected to try and throw Pedey out at first instead of making the short throw to 3rd to cut down Bradley. That brought up Xander Bogaerts with the bases loaded and two outs. Rays’ reliever Brandon Gomes used three sliders and only one fastball to get the count to 2-2. On the 5th pitch of the at-bat Gomes went back to the slider and Xander was waiting for it, golfing it over the Monster for his first career grand slam.

Just like that a 6-4 deficit turned into an 8-6 lead. If you watch the replay closely, you’ll see Bogaerts indulged himself in a quick little stare down of Gomes as if to say “I can’t believe you threw that weak shit in here again.” Lefty and I were hootin’ and hollerin’ like the Rays held a half-game lead over the Sox for the last wild card spot, not 4th place in the division.

So how did we get to that point? Eduardo Rodriguez was on the bump for the Sox and gave up 3 runs on his first nine pitches of the game, but was in control for the rest of his outing, going 6 and logging a quality start.

Pitchers IP  H  R ER BB SO HR ERA
Rodríguez 6.0 6 3 3 2 4 1 3.97

He was opposed by Chris Archer, who was effective but wild. He only allowed only one run, but thanks to five walks, couldn’t go more than 5 innings.

Given the matchup of Rodriguez and one of the AL’s best in Archer, you didn’t have to be Tim Kurkjian to predict that this game would come down to whose bullpen would be less ineffective. For a while that looked like it was going to be the Rays.

Although Alex Colome surrendered 3 runs,

  • Mookie and Pedroia singled.
  • Xander doubled high off the wall in left-centerfield. It looked gone off of the bat, but the chilly September wind kept the ball in the park.
  • Ortiz had an RBI groundout.
  • Shaw lifted a sac fly.

and the lead in the bottom of the 7th, Alexi Ogando gave it right back in the top of the 8th, putting the Sox in a 6-4 hole and necessitating Xander’s heroics.

Robbie Ross Jr. came in for the 9th and followed his standard operating procedure, giving up an absolute scud missile of a home run to Richie Shaffer before nailing down the save.

*With last night’s win, the Sox are now technically in 4th, a half game up on the Rays. But they were in last while this game was being played.

Notes:

-For those of you keeping score at home, that was two at-bats with men on in crucial late inning situations and two extra-base hits for Xander. He was a few degrees and a breeze away from the first being a three-run homer. He had 5 RBIs and also did this in the field.

-The Red Sox honored Big Papi for his 500th homer in a long, but nice ceremony before the game. Worth a watch if you have 11 minutes to kill.

Rich Hill Dominates – That’s Just What He Does

Posted on September 21, 2015 in Game Recap

This is what dominance looks like.

Rich Hill is my new favorite baseball player. I’ll admit that he kind of passed me by when he did some pitching for Boston from 2010-12, but he’s definitely in my line of sight now. Over 14 innings, Hill has struck out 20 and walked 1. He’s the first Red Sox pitcher to ever record 10 or more strikeouts in his first two starts. It’s been utter dominance, and aside from one shaky inning yesterday against the Blue Jays, no one has been able to figure him out.

The Sox should probably have scored in the top of the 1st to give Hill an early cushion, but a Mookie Betts walk and a Dustin Pedroia single that moved Betts to third proved inconsequential as Xander Bogaerts lined out and David Ortiz grounded into a shift-induced double play.

Hill kept going from where he left off against the Rays in his last start, putting the Jays down in order in the 1st. But in the 2nd, after a single and a strikeout, Dioner Navarro guessed right on a high first-pitch fastball, sending it over the left field wall to give Hill his first earned runs of 2015.

Immediately following this rude awakening, Kevin Pillar laid down a bunt that Travis Shaw and Hill could’ve played a little better…

Pillar advanced to second on another single and Ben Revere brought him home with yet another one-bagger. Kind of amazingly, Hill still technically struck out the side.

The Red Sox offense gutted out a little support for Hill in the 4th inning. Bogaerts got an infield single off Mark Buehrle to start things off. Then, when Bogaerts kept running to third on an awkwardly handled toss from first baseman Chris Colabello to Buerhle to retire Ortiz, Buehrle (a four-time Gold Glove winner) threw the ball away on a difficult first-to-third attempt, and Bogaerts scored. Shaw infield singled too, and Rusney Castillo doubled to put men on second and third, but Sandy León popped out to end the inning. 3-1, Toronto.

Fortunately, that one run wasn’t all the offense had to offer. Jackie Bradley, Jr. (recording a hit in consecutive games for the first time since September 7th) singled to start the 5th, but after a fielder’s choice and a fly out, Boston was left with Mookie Betts on first with 2 outs. Bogaerts and Ortiz, however, continued to atone for their 1st inning failings. Xander singled and Big Papi walked to load the bases, and Shaw came through with a huge opposite field single to tie the game at 3.

Meanwhile, Hill kept dominating, retiring the last 7 Blue Jays he faced before giving way to Noe Ramirez.

PITCHERS IP  H  R ER BB SO HR ERA
Hill 7.0 7 3 3 0 10 0 1.93

Before Ramirez actually appeared, however, the Red Sox put Hill in line for a win. Pablo Sandoval benefited from another pitcher error (this one by former closer Brett Cecil) to lead off, and after Castillo advanced Sandoval to second with a ground out, León came to the plate again. I’m sure hopes were not high on the Boston bench: the catcher had popped to first in the 2nd, second in the 4th, and third in the 6th. I’m no mathemagician, but he was clearly due to pop out to the Blue Jays’ catcher. Instead, he singled to move Pablo to third, and Bradley came through with a full count sacrifice fly to drive the go-ahead run home. 4-3, Boston. Pablo actually probably should have been out on the throw, but Navarro couldn’t handle it on the bounce:

Ramirez got a hold for his work in the 8th inning, despite allowing a single to Edwin Encarnacion and throwing the ball away on an attempted pickoff of Encarnacion’s pinch runner, Dalton Pompey. He had him if Shaw could’ve made the catch, but the throw was pretty low. Anyway, with Pompey at second base, Ramirez got Colabello to ground out to end the 8th.

Robbie Ross, Jr. gave up a two-out ground rule double to a pinch-hitting Russell Martin, but struck out Justin Smoak to notch the 4th save of his career.

Notes:

1. Out of the 14 innings Hill has pitched so far, 8 of them have been perfect 1-2-3 frames.

Sox Score 5 in the 9th to Shock Blue Jays

Posted on September 20, 2015 in Game Recap
JBJ ties the game at 4 in the top of the 9th. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)

JBJ ties the game at 4 in the top of the 9th. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)

The Red Sox played spoiler to the first-place Blue Jays yesterday in the Great White North. It’s always a little disappointing to help the Yankees gain a game in the standings, but I’ll take it. This game started out pretty uneventful, with Wade Miley and R.A. Dickey limiting baserunners and matching zeros through the first five innings.

In the top of the 6th, Xander took Dickey deep on the first pitch he saw, giving the Sox a brief 1-0 lead.

In the bottom of the 6th, Miley gave up a two run home run to Edwin Encarnacion, putting the Red Sox in a 2-1 hole. A shallow hole, to be sure, and in the top of the next inning, the Red Sox would get back to even ground thanks to a Brock Holt double and a Jackie Bradley Jr. “seeing eye double.” That’s not really a thing, but watch this video and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The ball was just out of the reach of the second baseman, Pennington, and Jackie hustled into second while the defense was chasing the ball down.

The game was knotted at two until the bottom of the 8th, when Noe Ramirez walked back to back men and gave up an RBI single to start off the inning. He’d give up another infield single before being lifted for Jean Machi, who got a strikeout of Martin before surrendering an RBI single to Kevin Pillar.

The score stood at 4-2 Jays heading into the top of the 9th, with Toronto’s closer Roberto Osuna standing on the mound. As someone who has Osuna in fantasy I can tell you he’s either dominant or very hittable, with rarely any outings in the middle ground. Fortunately for the Sox, Roberto was in the latter category yesterday. Holt got things started with a double. Swihart struck out looking to bring up JBJ, who immediately went down 0-2 and for a minute it looked like Osuna was in pretty good shape to close out the game. Jackie, before his double in the 7th, had been 0 for his last 21 and 1 for his last 32, and as I mentioned, that double wasn’t exactly a scorcher.

But after taking a couple of balls, Jackie stroked a 2-2 dead red fastball for a game-tying two-run home run. It was a “Bondsian” sweet, easy swing where he knew right off the bat that he got all of it, as evidenced by his inability to inhibit that little hop he took after his first step. On swings like that, everything works in such perfect harmony that you don’t even feel the impact of the ball on the bat.

After a Mookie groundout, Pedroia would walk and Xander would single, bringing up Big Papi with two out, two on, and the game tied in the 9th. Hmm think he’ll come through? He poked an RBI single to left to bring home Pedroia, who executed some fancy footwork to avoid a Russell Martin tag. 5-4.

The Sox would add a couple of insurance runs on a wild pitch and an RBI single by Rusney. Good thing too, because Robbie Ross Jr., who has become the de facto closer, surrendered a two-run job to Joey Bats in the bottom of the 9th, but was able to strand the game-tying run at second base to close the door.

Notes:

-Miley had a weird start, giving up 2 in 6.2, striking out 7, but he also walked 5 and gave up 3 hits, including the homer to Edwin.

-It’s such a cliché, but Pedroia really does give 100% on every play in every game. It’s a treat to watch him leg out a triple, score the go-ahead run on a creative slide, and start a key bases-loaded double play. All in a day’s work.

-Holt made this ridiculous play in the bottom of the 6th.

Great range from the Brock Star.

Things to Watch: Bills vs. Patriots

Posted on September 20, 2015 in Random Stuff

Hey everybody. Since I’m more well-acquainted with football than baseball anyway, I decided to throw together some stuff to look out for in today’s game. It’s going to be mostly scheme-related stuff from last week. Will New England continue to do the same things they did last week against the Steelers?

The Patriots used what looked like a nickel base against Pittsburgh. That means that they exchanged a member of the front seven (linemen and linebackers) for an extra defensive back. Usually, this means taking away a linebacker and replacing him with a cornerback to cover an extra wide receiver. The Patriots did this, but they also stood their defensive ends (usually Rob Ninkovich and Chandler Jones) up in a two-point stance, like this:

steelers front

Depending on how you use it, this gives you the power of a typical four-man defensive line or the versatility of a 3-4 look.

The other thing that New England did with this alignment was bring in an extra safety instead of a cornerback. They did rotate corners in, of course, when the Steelers brought an extra receiver onto the field. But New England stayed in its “nickel” look for virtually the entire game, even when Pittsburgh went with a heavier look. Against these heavier personnel groups, Patrick Chung came into the game and played near the line of scrimmage, looking for all the world like an outside linebacker.

Despite the Patriots’ lack of typical defensive linemen in the game, they were still able to cram the box with bodies when they brought Chung into the game, as seen here:

eight man front

Despite the Patriots use of only two linemen with their hands in the dirt, they showed a look that discouraged the run and encouraged a pass. And with so many bodies to keep track of, Donta Hightower was able to sprint past the center to sack Roethlisberger and put Pittsburgh in a third-and-long from deep in its own territory.

I would’ve liked to do a better job with this, but I’m kind of in a rush. Next week this’ll be top notch I’m sure.