Usually, it’s very easy to blame the pitching on this team when things aren’t going well. But over the past three games, that just hasn’t been an option. With three outstanding defensive performances supported by a total of five runs, the offense, once supposed to be the backbone and overwhelming strength of the team, is floundering. It’s not as if the group is suddenly bereft of skill – they outhit the Mariners 7 to 5, for example. But the results are lacking, and the Sox put their pitching staff in a position to lose last night. Boston’s offense is now below the league average in runs scored and, frankly, you just can’t count on anyone to come through. Not even Brock Holt! Anyway, that’s enough sulking by me.

The reason, I guess, why I’m so miffed about this one is my soft spot for Buchholz. He deserved better in this one. 11 strikeouts!

He was flat-out dominant, retiring 15 straight batters after Robinson Cano’s double off the left field wall in the bottom of the 1st, including 7 strikeouts. In fact, Clay only ended up giving up three hits on the night, but unfortunately, the one to break up his out streak was his only real mistake of the night, a solo home run by Seth Smith to tie the game at 1.

Buchholz came back with a vengeance, striking out four of the next five batters he faced, but the damage was done. It’s really a shame that one pitch was enough to take the decision out of his hands, but that’s what happens when your team’s own offense can’t get anyone across the plate. Hanley, besides his series-opening 4-5 performance, has been 3-23 since coming back from running into a green wall and has seen his OPS shrink from .949 to .859 over the course of seven games. And when your typical playmakers aren’t making plays, you have to try to get by with a single by Victorino, a stolen base, and an eventually stranded triple by Xander Bogaerts as your only run of the game.

The problem isn’t just that the team isn’t hitting, though, obviously, they aren’t – four everyday players (Sandoval, Ramirez, Pedroia, and Bogaerts) are hitting above .250, and everyone else is hitting .228 or below (in the case of Mike Napoli, far below, at .168). No, the Sox’ biggest problem could be their lack of extra base hits. With 84, they’re 26th in MLB, and that’s just not gonna cut it. Part of this can be attributed to the Monster and the wall-ball singles it creates, but their 42 doubles is 29th in the league and 18 lower than the league average of 60. I’m sure this is a little boring to read, but incompetence is boring and awful. What do you want me to do about it?

Even when hits are strung together, like in the 4th inning when Napoli (!) and Victorino hit back-to-back singles, they managed to bungle it, throwing away the last out of the inning on a silly baserunning error.

From the 6th to the 9th, the Sox got the leadoff man on base three times, with Pedroia walking in the 6th, Bogaerts singling in the 8th, and Ortiz singling in the 9th. And each time, they came away with nothing to show for it.

But all of this futility could’ve been ignored, or at least not dwelled on, if Boston could’ve gotten through to extra innings and put something together. Instead, a series of poor decisions by John Farrell consigned the team to a loss. I understand bringing in Tommy Layne – he’s actually been pretty good this year, and the top of the Mariners’ order is lefty-heavy. It even convinced Lloyd McClendon to pinch-hit Willie Bloomquist for Seth Smith, who grounded out for the first out of the inning. But Brad Miller singled and advanced to second on a ground out to Napoli, and Nelson Cruz (by basically any measure, the best hitter in MLB this year right now if you ignore Dee Gordon) came up to bat.

Now, with first base open in a tie game in the bottom of the 9th and a lefty pitcher going, logic would dictate that you might intentionally walk the best hitter in the league, a righty, especially with a lefty (Kyle Seager) batting behind him. In fact, logic absolutely dictates that. Not doing that would DEFY logic. And yet, Farrell chose to bring in Junichi Tazawa. No one will ever know what he was thinking. Had Tazawa had past success against Cruz? Yup, Cruz was only 1-8 against him. Had Cruz been having a bad night? Sure, he struck out three times against Clay Buchholz. But if that was your logic, KEEP BUCHHOLZ IN. At 102 pitches, couldn’t we have stretched him a little more? And past success has nothing to do with the situation when you’re facing someone who’s hitting .358! I can’t even believe it, I really can’t fathom what was going on in Farrell’s head. Actually, let’s ask him:

Hey John, what were you think –

“Before you even ask the question, that’s a terrible decision on my part.”

It sure was.

Cruz hit a “single” to left-center to get Miller home.

Game, blouses. Or, I guess, fedoras. God, Seattle people are the worst. No offense to anyone from Seattle, we can’t afford to lose readers.

P.S. I still trust Junichi. He got screwed. The splitter he threw him to get the second strike was beyond nasty. He just shouldn’t have been forced to throw him a strike. Put him on first! Especially once you hit the full count! How did no one figure this out?!

For the first time in the month of May 2015, the Red Sox have won a series. It wasn’t exactly a magical performance, but 2 out of 3 is 2 out of 3. That’s just basic math.

The listed highlights on MLB.com for this one are mostly A’s videos, even though they put up zero runs against Wade Miley and the 1-2 combination of Tazawa and Uehara. In fact, out of 14 videos, there are as many Red Sox highlights (5) as there are Coco Crisp highlights. I guess what I’m saying is COCO IS BACK BABY.

From a certain perspective, Miley had a terrible start. He let people on base because he liked the cut of their jib, including the first two batters of the game on eight straight balls after a strike to start things off. In the first six innings he pitched, Miley allowed at least one runner into scoring position 5 separate times (the 5th inning being the only exception), each time with less than 2 outs. In each of the first three innings, Miley allowed a runner to reach third but no farther, including Marcus Semien, who led off the 3rd inning with a triple over Mookie Betts‘ head. Mookie misplayed it pretty badly – possibly losing it in the sun? – by running pretty nonchalantly in its general direction until he realized it was going over his head, turning on the afterburners a little too late to catch up.

But as in every other inning, Miley found a way out of the jam. He wasn’t doing it with nasty stuff: he only had one strikeout on the day. He wasn’t necessarily doing it with the sinker: he actually got the A’s to fly out (10) more than ground out (9). He wasn’t getting bailed out by his defense: most of the plays made by the Sox were fairly routine (excepting this outstanding pick by Sandoval that kept the game-tying run at second base). The best you could say for ol’ Wade was that he induced weak contact, serving up pitches that looked hittable but never resulted in anything better than a triple over the center fielder’s head that Jackie Bradley, Jr. would’ve caught with his eyes closed.

So is inducing weak contact a thing? So far this year for Miley, it is, according to Fangraphs. He’s giving up less line drives and less hard-hit balls. As the statheads say though, things always regress to the mean, and Miley hasn’t been good even with these possible anomalies.

On a day when five Red Sox went 0-4, including Brock Holt, who’s now below .300 for the first time since he went 0-1 on April 9, and the team as a whole only managed to draw one walk, they still managed to plate two runs. How? Righty’s blog title from yesterday’s game comes to mind – the ugly way, with a struggling Daniel Nava as the key cog.

Sonny Gray pitched seven innings, with five 1-2-3 appearances. But where the Athletics struggled to plate runners in scoring position, Boston managed to bring home its only runner to reach second base against Gray in the second inning. After a leadoff single by Hanley, the next two batters struck out, but the pitch got away from Oakland catcher Phegley (that is one ugly last name) and Ramirez trotted as slowly as possible to second. Then, according to MLB.com, “Nava flare[d] a run-scoring single to left,” which is probably the kindest possible description of what happened. Make no mistake, this was a pop-up. But it was one of those pop-ups that immediately looked uncatchable, and so it was, bouncing easily in front of Crisp to score Ramirez from second easily, as he’d obviously been running on contact. Better lucky than good.

After a much cleaner single by Nava to lead off the eighth and a botched bunt by Jackie Bradley, Sandy León managed to get plunked by a curveball, pushing Nava into scoring position, just the second runner to touch second base for the Sox all afternoon. And after a disappointing full count strikeout by Mookie, Marcus Semien (currently tied for the league lead in errors with Ian Desmond, with 11) airmailed a would-be inning-ending ground ball by Pedroia over Canha’s head at first, allowing Nava to score. For what it’s worth, the scorer gave Pedey an infield single and awarded the Sox’ baserunners another base on Semien’s throwing error. Again – better lucky than good. This is one of those games that drive stat guys crazy, a game that, by the numbers, the Red Sox should not have been in position to win…and yet they did. The 2015 Red Sox, everybody!

P.S. Forgot to mention, Tazawa was lights out over 1.1 and Uehara was near enough to lights out to make no difference. I love those guys.