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CURT & SHONDA SCHILLING |
BOSTON STRONG -
THE ROAD TO REDEMPTION
Jon Lester lifts the Sox
past the Rays
June 27, 2013 ...
If only for a moment during the Red Sox's 7-4 victory over the Blue Jays on a misty night at Fenway Park, the pitching woes of Jon Lester looked like they would continue.
In the opening at-bat of the night, he labored through control issues, eventually missing on four fastballs, and issued a leadoff walk to the speedy Jose Reyes. Three more misplaced pitches later, Lester was down 3-0 to slugger Jose Bautista. From then
on, he took control. He got Bautista to lazily pop up a 94-mph fastball to left field and forced Edwin Encarnacion to roll over on a changeup for an inning-ending double play.
Lester needed just nine pitches to retire Toronto in order in the second, seven pitches to do the same in the third and, courtesy of another double-play ball from Encarnacion, the lefty again faced just three batters in the fourth. It wasn't until Melky Cabrera's
single up the middle in the fifth inning that the Blue Jays earned their first of five hits they mustered against Lester on the evening.
The strong outing was perhaps more welcomed than normal for the Red Sox. Mired in a pitching slump for much of the past month, Lester had just one quality start in his last seven outings and an 8.44 ERA in June. But Lester made some slight changes in his
mechanics after his last start in Detroit. To get in a better rhythm, he started moving his hands more before he got set and he slowed down his overall approach to improve the timing of his delivery. The altered approach worked. Thursday's performance looked
more like the Lester who was one of the best pitchers in baseball and a workhorse for the Red Sox's pitching staff with a 6-0 record and 2.72 ERA in his first nine starts.
Lester gave up four runs Thursday and needed just 94 pitches to get through seven-plus innings while striking out five and walking three. The outing wasn't perfect. Lester started the eighth inning, but after giving up a pair of singles to Rajai Davis and
Izturis and falling behind 3-0 to Emilio Bonifacio, Lester jammed his right hip, sending a "zinging sensation" down his leg. Junichi Tazawa came on in relief and allowed two inherited runners to score.
One big inning was all it took for the Red Sox to give Lester a comfortable lead. After being retired in order in the first, Boston erupted for seven runs and seven hits in the second, including a two-run homer from Dustin Pedroia that landed in the first row of
the Green Monster Seats. It was Pedroia's fifth dinger of the year and his first since May 27, a span of 110 at-bats. The Red Sox batted 11 times in the lucrative second inning and Toronto starter Chien-Ming Wang, who was riding a personal streak of 16
2/3 innings without allowing an earned run entering the game, was pulled with two outs in the frame.
For the second straight night, Koji Uehara came out in the ninth for a save situation and retired the side in order. In seven games this season pitching on no days' rest, the 38-year-old righthander has allowed just three hits in 6 2/3 innings.
For the first time since 2009, the Sox were in first place at the halfway point of the season. Their 3 1/2 game lead is their largest through 81 games since 2007. They've been the only American League team to stay above .500 all season
Former Sox pitcher Curt Schilling and his wife, Shonda, have dropped the price on their Medfield home. The 20-room, 8,000-square-foot house, which sits on 26 acres is on the market for $2.9 million, a relative bargain compared to the $4.5 million the couple paid
for the place in 2004. The Schillings, who bought the house from former Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe, first put the house on the market in 2008, asking $8 million, before dropping the price to $5 million the following April. Schilling has claimed he
lost millions of his own money in the highly publicized failure of 38 Studios, the video-game development firm he founded. |
