Blue Jays - 301 100 002 - 7 10 1 Red Sox - 135 000 10x - 10 13 1The Red Sox moved one step closer on Wednesday night to winning the AL East. Xander Bogaerts went 3-for-5, driving in four runs. His three-run homer in the third inning was the big blow, increasing the Red Sox's lead from 6-4 to 9-4. Rajai Davis doubled, singled, stole a base, and scored twice in the first three innings. Hanley Ramirez, Dustin Pedroia, and Mitch Moreland also had two hits each.
Rick Porcello (5.2-7-5-2-8, 95) gave up back-to-back doubles to Josh Donaldson and Justin Smoak in the first inning, before hanging a curve that Jose Bautista lined into the Monster Seats. (Bautista cannot really catch up to most fastballs these days, so why is anyone bothering with off-speed stuff? For the rest of the game, the Corpse of Joey Bats got nothing but gas; he struck out, fouled to the catcher, and grounded to shortstop.)
Darwin Barney took Porcello deep in the fourth, the 38th long ball Porcello has allowed this year. That tied him with Tim Wakefield (1996) for the most home runs allowed in a season by a Red Sox pitcher. Right behind them is Earl Wilson (37 in 1964) and Josh Beckett (36 in 2006). If you are curious, the major league record is 50, by Bert Blyleven of the Twins in 1986.
Porcello was let off the hook, however, with some early run support. Andrew Benintendi singled with two outs in the bottom of the first. Ramirez doubled to the base of the left field wall, and Teoscar Hernandez botched the play, allowing Benintendi to score. First, the ball was catchable, but Hernandez did not go back far enough. Then he dropped the carom. And then kicked the ball away.
Boston took a 4-3 lead in the second. Christian Vazquez swung at a high 3-2 pitch - which should have been ignored for ball 4 - and fouled it off. Then Marco Estrada threw what looked like strike 3, but home plate umpire Larry Vanover called it ball 4. So Vazquez got his walk after all! Rafael Devers struck out. Davis doubled into the left field corner. Jackie Bradley - who learned before the game that he had been credited with a hit on a ball originally ruled an error back on September 20 (thus making his current 0-for-25 skid merely 0-for-16) - grounded to second, scoring Vazquez. (By the end of the night, it was at 0-for-20.)
Bogaerts singled to center to tie the game. On a 2-2 pitch to Pedroia, Bogaerts took off for second. Pedroia singled to right-center. Bogaerts never stopped running, beating Kevin Pillar's throw to the plate with a headfirst slide. Vanover was only 2-3 feet away and staring right at the play. He called Bogaerts out - and X jumped up, made the safe sign, and immediately yelled at the Red Sox bench to challenge the call. He said something to Vanover and it was clear the umpire was telling him, Nope, you were most certainly out. The replays clearly showed Bogaerts was safe - and, sure enough, the call was reversed. (NESN, of course, was so busy showing one particular replay (for, like, the 7th time) that it missed the umpires' changed call. All we heard was the crowd cheering the decision.)
The Jays tied the game in the third when Donaldson singled, Smoak walked, and Kendrys Morales singled to center. Boston batted around in the home half. First, Ramirez crushed a 2-2 pitch over everything in left. Moreland and Vazquez singled, and the Toronto bullpen began stirring. Devers forced Vazquez at second and Davis's right-field single scored Moreland. Luis Santos took over for Estrada (2.1-9-8-1-2, 80). Bradley lunged at a full-count outside pitch and struck out, but Bogaerts hit his 10th home run of the season, a hard shot to left-center.
After Pedroia singled, Benintendi went down on strikes. His out was the first of 11 straight Red Sox hitters that were retired by the Jays' bullpen. Only one of the 11 batters hit the ball out of the infield.
At the same time, Porcello settled down. He allowed the home run to Barney, but struck out three in the fourth. He walked the leadoff man in the fifth, but got a foul pop-up and a double play. In the sixth, he quickly set down the first two before John Farrell called on David Price. Ryan Goins tapped back to the mound for the final out. Price struck out the side in the seventh. (This was Price's first time pitching at Fenway since July 16.)
Moreland homered down the right field line in the seventh. Addison Reed allowed a two-out single in the eighth. Brandon Workman pitched the ninth, and was hit for a one-out double by Goins and a two-out home run by Hernandez. It seemed as though if anyone else got on base, Farrell would go to Craig Kimbrel (it was now a "save situation", after all), but Workman made that decision unnecessary, by getting Donaldson to line out to first.
Even with all the scoring, the game was played in only 2:57.
MFY: The Yankees beat the Rays 6-1. The Red Sox are 3 GA with 4 games to play. The Magic Number is 2.
Bogaerts, SSWhen you lead your division by three games and there are only five games remaining on the schedule, it is probably not time to talk about "must wins". But, Red Sox, you seriously better win this game tonight.
Pedroia, 2B
Benintendi, LF
Ramirez, DH
Moreland, 1B
Vazquez, C
Devers, 3B
Davis, RF
Bradley, CF
Gregor Chisholm, MLB.com:
Mookie Betts (left wrist), Dustin Pedroia (left knee) and Eduardo Nunez (right knee) are day to day. An MRI on Betts showed no structural damage, and there's at least a chance he will play on Wednesday. The same could be said about Pedroia, but it seems highly unlikely Nunez will be back before the final series of the regular season against the Astros.With a less-than-ideal lineup, the regulars who are healthy have to step up. And Jackie Bradley has not been doing his part. He's 0-for-his-last-25 and hitting .167/.235/.295 in September. His slump at the plate actually goes back to the end of July: .194/.293/.319 since July 30.
MFY Watch: The Yankees are 3 GB with 5 games to play. The Red Sox's Magic Number to clinch the AL East is 3. ... TBR/MFY.
2 comments:
Chad Finn: "For a team that was so often accused of being boring in the post-David Ortiz hangover,"
Again, by who? The real live human beings I know (even Lupica in his article about how the Yankees are better!) have been unified in thinking that this team (as if it fucking matters as long as they're in first fucking place anyway) is fun, exciting, etc. It's the media who makes this shit up (especially when their wittle feewings are huwt by one of the players) and then their brainless followers spout it back to them.
The dead giveaway about this shit is the "Nunez gave them their identity" bullshit storyline (that even Valentin spewed back to us on a NESN broadcast). So let me get this straight: If the Red Sox had lost 20 in a row after getting Nunez, all the fans would be beaming over the fact that the team had "found its identity"?? It's so obvious that the media, who unapologetically bashed the team because they felt wronged by them (and their liberal ownership*), needed a way to justify that fans were flocking to Fenway Park to watch their first-place, fun-loving, literally-dancing-on-the-field Red Sox. So they had to say, "Oh of course it wasn't THOSE guys, it's the new guys, Nunez and Devers, that are the only players you like, the only players who have made the team good (because they weren't before, they just *happened* to be in first place), and the only players with personality which thereby gave the team an identity."
*Side note on politics. In the past I didn't even think about it in terms of the Red Sox & media. But after years of trying to figure out why these radio guys are SO anti-Red Sox, while at the same time defending the Patriots to the death through one scandal after another, I finally made the connection that maybe the right-wing maniac hosts of Boston sports radio have a special reason to love one team and hate the other.
Anyway, I've been in yet another (hopefully final, pray for me) radio boycott for months and months. I have no idea what gossipy bullshit I've missed, which brown-skinned players have talked out of turn, etc. I'm sure they're using the word "panic" a lot, if they're talking about baseball at all. More likely it's random basketball talk, or even more likely than that, all of them sitting in a big room each with one of those wet clay-making things that spin around, battling each other to see who can sculpt the best approximation of Tom Brady's genitals to make a gigantic altar out of so they can worship it while chanting racist, sexist, homophobic, and Islamophobic comments.
Elias:
"It's the 14th time this season Boston has won after trailing by three-or-more runs, the most such wins in a single season by the team since it won 16 games in that fashion in 1959. Five of the Red Sox' wins when trailing by three or more runs have come since September 15. No other major-league team has more than two such wins since that date."
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