Red Sox - 000 000 000 01 - 1 6 1 Orioles - 000 000 000 00 - 0 5 0Jackie Bradley scored on Orioles reliever Brad Brach's bases-loaded wild pitch, giving the Red Sox their franchise-tying 15th extra-inning victory of the season. Boston is now 15-3 in extra-inning games. In 1943, the team went 15-14-2, playing in a major league-record 31 extra-inning games.
Tuesday's win was the 18th extra-inning 1-0 win for the Red Sox (since at least 1912) and only the fourth in the team's last 44 seasons. It was also only the third time the Red Sox have won an extra-inning game without recording an RBI - and the first time it has happened on the road:
June 29, 1917: Red Sox 2, Yankees 1 (10)The Red Sox lead all teams with 17 wins when tied (12) or trailing (5) after eight innings. (All five of those wins have come since the All-Star break.)
July 22, 1918: Red Sox 1, Tigers 0 (10) (G1)
September 19, 2017: Red Sox 1, Orioles 0 (11)
After Brach threw only seven pitches to get through the tenth, he had a man on first base and two outs in the eleventh. Then his control suddenly disappeared. He walked Andrew Benintendi on four pitches. He walked Mookie Betts on five pitches*. With the bases loaded, his first pitch to Mitch Moreland bounced away from catcher Wellington Castillo, and Bradley scored easily from third.
[*: Actually, two of the balls to Betts may have been strikes, but home plate umpire Mike Muchlinski blew the calls.]
Drew Pomeranz (6.1-5-0-2-5, 98) needed some assistance from his fielders in keeping Baltimore off the scoreboard. Manny Machado doubled with two outs in the third and tried to score on Jonathan Schoop's single to left. Benintendi made a perfect, one-hop throw to the plate and Christian Vazquez slapped the tag on the doomed runner. In the fifth, Chris Davis walloped Pom's first pitch to deep right-center. Bradley raced to the track and matter-of-factly jumped up and pulled the ball back. Pomeranz stranded a runner at third when he struck out Mark Trumbo to end the sixth.
Pomeranz has allowed two earned runs or fewer in 22 starts this year, the most by a Red Sox pitcher since Pedro Martinez also has 22 in 2003. (!)
Kevin Gausman (8-3-0-1-7, 106) retired the first 14 Red Sox batters, his streak ending when Rafael Devers singled over the head of right fielder Austin Hays with two outs in the fifth. With two down in the sixth, Xander Bogaerts singled and Benintendi walked, but Betts grounded to shortstop. Sam Travis singled to lead off the eighth and Rajai Davis pinch-ran. Davis never attempted to steal, though, as Brock Holt struck out looking (without the glasses he was wearing for his previous at-bats) and Bradley grounded into a double play.
Facing Darren O'Day in the ninth, Benintendi doubled with one out, but Betts and Moreland both flied out. Devers singled with one out in the tenth, but pinch-hitter Dustin Pedroia grounded into a double play.
In the eleventh, Holt led off with a high chopper to the first base side of the infield. Brach and first baseman Davis converged. Brach reached up and caught the ball without breaking stride to the bag. Holt (stupidly) slid in head first, slowing himself down in the process. The play was extremely close, but Buck Showalter did not challenge the safe call. Watching one replay, it looked like Holt's right hand merely passed over the bag and did not actually touch it, which would have meant he was out. But who am I to question Showalter, aka Baseball Super-Genius? Maybe Buck wanted Boston to have the baserunner instead of his team recording the out.
Bradley forced Holt at second and Bogaerts grounded to third. X also went into the bag head first and was called out. (What the fuck is it with these idiots? Don't they want to get to the bag as soon as they possibly can? Isn't that the goddamn purpose of the game? Yet they do something that slows them down every time and, in Holt's case, risks an injury if the runner's hand is stepped on.) The Red Sox challenged the call, but it was upheld. Brach then walked Benintendi and Betts and uncorked his wild pitch.
After Matt Barnes got two popups to start the bottom of the eleventh, Adam Jones hit a routine grounder to third. Devers's low throw skipped past Moreland and Jones advanced to second. It seemed like the kind of throw that Moreland usually scoops up, but Devers was charged with his 13th error of the season. He has now committed an error in five consecutive games. (Devers has also been in a hitting slump for the last four weeks, coming into tonight's game with a .288 on-base percentage since August 20.) Barnes got an easy comebacker from Trey Mancini and made the game-ending play.
The Bullpen (Carson Smith, Addison Reed, Craig Kimbrel, Joe Kelly, Barnes): 4.1 innings, 0 hits, 0 walks, 0 runs, 8 strikeouts. (Only two of 16 batters reached base: Jones was hit on the hand by Kimbrel in the ninth and he reached on Devers's error in the twelfth.)
Back on April 5, in the second game of the season, the Red Sox and Pirates went into extra innings tied 0-0. Sandy Leon won that game with a three-run home run in the bottom of the twelfth.
MFY Watch: The Yankees beat the Twins 5-2, staying 3 GB. ... Since the Red Sox and Yankees last played each other on September 3, New York is 11-4 and Boston is 10-4.
Bogaerts, SSCraig Kimbrel has faced 236 hitters this season - and has struck out 120 of them. That is an astonishing rate of 50.8%. Looking at all major league seasons of 60+ innings, only one pitcher has struck out more than half the batters he faced. ... That was Craig Kimbrel, in 2012 (50.2% (231 BF, 116 K)).
Benintendi, LF
Betts, RF
Moreland, 1B
Vazquez, C
Devers, 3B
Travis, DH
Holt, 2B
Bradley, CF
If we lower the minimum number of innings, Aroldis Chapman's 2014 season makes the cut (54 IP, 202 BF, 106 K, 52.5%). Other than that, however, no other pitcher has ever reached 50% in a season of even 30 innings.
MFY Watch: The Yankees are 3 GB in the AL East. ... MIN/MFY (a possible Wild Card Game preview).
From today's SoSH Game Thread:
ReplyDeleteInsideTheParker said:
I just finished watching [the Orioles' broadcast's] condensed game on MLB, and they had so many shots of every important play that it was impressive. I continue to be amazed that NESN has a TV guy in its ownership and still fails in the simplest production elements. (Of course, he was a sitcom guy and all they had to do was film sets, so I guess he's not bringing much expertise with him.)
joyofsox:
Two major reasons why NESN is so bad:
1. NESN's insistence on showing the runner crossing home plate when he scores (as if the run would not count if it was not televised) which often means we miss seeing a close play (or a runner being tagged out) at second or third base. (I think NESN learned this from YES, which used to do (and maybe still does) the same thing.)
2. NESN has a bad habit of showing a huge wide shot of the entire outfield on routine fly balls. It is such a wide shot that a viewer - even one with a 44-inch screen like myself - has no idea where the ball is. I believe this is because their camera operators are so bad that they often focus on the wrong outfielder or show the bleachers on something that is quite clearly not going to be home run. By giving us a wide shot, they can correctly claim they showed the catch.
Among my myriad complaints, one that they absolutely need to go to some kind of seminar for is pickoff attempts. I know it's a quick thing that sometimes happens without warning, but their success rate in actually cutting to the 1B camera in time to see the ball arrive there has to be around 20% if that. You've got a camera trained on 1B when there's a runner there, so the issue must be that the producer is just so incredibly slow to shout that camera's name or number or whatever, that we never see it in time. Sometimes they cut and the first baseman has already thrown the ball back to the pitcher.
ReplyDeleteAs for fly balls, I agree, I think they just can't tell where it's going. You've got balls landing off screen on HRs and deep foul balls. Gotta be something they can do about this.
Bonus: do they even KNOW the rule that a batter can run to first on a dropped third strike? Happened last night (as the final out of the 8th in a tie game with a runner on third too, in other words, a VERY important throw to first) and they literally did not show the throw.
If the Red Sox play as close to their current win pct. the rest of the way as possible (6-5), they'd finish with 93 wins. Only person to predict 93 in the contest? Allan.
ReplyDelete