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THE BEST RED SOX TEAM EVAH! ...
David Price turns in
a complete game gem
May 17, 2018
...
David Price has caught the ire of the fan base and media and more
importantly has been struggling on the mound of late. He turned it
around with perhaps his best start as a member of the Red Sox. The
offense, led by a running Mookie
Betts, was very good tonight as well.
There were a whole lot of good things about this game, but the story has to
begin with Price. His velocity was up and his command was perfect. There will be
commentary about about his opponents, but it really wouldn’t matter who Price
was pitching. He was locating 94-95 on the edges with his best cutter and
changeup.
Really, there’s not much to say about many individual
events from this game for Price, as he was never really pushed into any
stressful situations by the opponent. All of his innings were relatively easy,
and in fact he set down the first six batters he faced. Over the next three
innings he’d allow one single in each, and two of them were to Danny
Valencia who kills lefties in general and has had a ton
of success against Price over their careers. The other was an infield single
from Jonathan
Schoop that traveled about six feet.
After that, Price got right back to cruising with a couple
more 1-2-3 innings in the sixth and seventh, and he was at only 71 pitches. He
came back out and tossed another 1-2-3 in the eighth on only nine pitches,
putting him a 19-pitch scoreless inning away from a Maddux. For those who don’t
know, that’s a complete game shutout with under 100 pitches.
Unfortunately, he didn’t quite reach that mark. He scuffled
a bit in the ninth, allowing a leadoff double to end a long at bat. After a
couple of quick pop ups it looked like the Maddux might be his. Then, Manny
Machado had to ruin that with a two-run home run to take the shutout away. Price
still finished off the inning with fewer than 100 pitches on the day, and home
run or no it was an incredible outing. In all, he allowed the two runs over the
nine full innings on five hits, no walks and eight strikeouts. We’ll take that
every time.
Meanwhile, the offense wasn’t having much of a tough time
against Kevin
Gausman, particularly after they got on base. The Orioles pitcher
had no sense of how to hold runners on base in this game, and the Red Sox took
full advantage of this bizarre turn of events. They got things started early,
too, when Betts led
off with a single and moved over to second on a stand-up stolen base. Betts
would come around a couple batters later when J.D.
Martinez got a splitter that stayed up in the zone and
he smashed it out to straightaway center field for what was already his eighth
homer in May.
The Red Sox quieted down for a little bit after that until
they broke the game open in the fifth. There, Jackie
Bradley Jr. kicked things off with a walk, and then
stole second on a pick-off play where once again Gausman paid
no mind to the runner. He’d move to third on a Betts single and then score on
an Andrew
Benintendi sacrifice fly to extend the lead to two.
Betts then stole second on an identical play to Bradley’s, and after Hanley
Ramirez reached on an infield single they pulled off a
double steal. That gave the Sox five stolen bases off Gausman in less than five
full innings, with three coming from Betts. Eventually, both runners would come
home on another massive shot from Xander
Bogaerts out to left field. He has been abusing the
light stanchions on the Monster this year, and it’s been awesome. Those six runs
were more than enough for Price. |
