THE BEST RED SOX TEAM EVAH! ...
Eduardo Rodriguez with a great performance
April 13, 2018
...
This was a really encouraging game for the Red Sox, who not
only beat up on Chris Tillman early in the game but also got a strong
performance from Eduardo Rodriguez. The bullpen is still a little
shaky and it makes these games just a bit more stressful than they
really have to be, but ultimately this team is clicking in both the
lineup and the rotation right now, and it’s leading to a lot of early
leads. Even better is that on offense it seems as if there’s a
rotating cast of contributors, with today’s performance being
highlighted by Rafael Devers and Eduardo Nuñez.
In the first inning, Rodriguez actually looked a lot
like the guy he was in his first outing, which figured to be good enough
considering the Red Sox were going up against Chris Tillman but still not
exactly what they wanted to see. He leaned heavily on his
fastball here wasn’t commanding it as well as he would have liked. The damage
was limited, but he allowed two singles in the first three batters to put
runners on the corners with just one out. He’d get out of it allowing just one
run on a sacrifice fly, but there was some concern moving forward.
That concern was erased in the second inning, and it
never really came back. The young southpaw was ultra-confident facing the bottom
half of Baltimore’s lineup, and his cutter in particular was looking deadly. He
struck out the side in the inning, and Rodriguez rode that confidence through
the rest of the day.
The third was another easy inning in which he allowed
just one runner on a walk, and in the fourth he allowed two hits, but one was a
bloop that found no-man’s land and ended in an out when Mookie Betts made a
heads up play to take the ball off the tarp and throw out Adam Jones at second
base. The Orioles outfielder thought it was a ground rule double for going over
the tarp, and Betts pounced on that mistake. Rodriguez would come back out for
the fifth and get yet another 1-2-3 inning with a couple more strikeouts thrown
on it.
Things did get a little shaky again in Rodriguez’ last
inning and he probably ended up throwing more pitches than Alex Cora and the coaching
staff would have liked. He didn’t really blow up or anything here, but the
Orioles got some baserunners on a single and a walk, bringing Chris Davis up to
the plate with Rodriguez approaching 100 pitches and representing the likely
final batter the lefty would face. Rodriguez didn’t disappoint, coming at the
slugger hard and eventually getting him to freeze on a changeup for an inning-
and outing-ending strikeout.
Overall, the lefty threw seven innings in which he allowed
just that one first-inning run. The Orioles managed just five hits and drew two
walks on the day while striking out eight times, with Rodriguez attacking the
zone, missing bats and utilizing his full repertoire.
Offensively, this game felt a lot like that series
finale against the Yankees in which the Red Sox built an early lead off a
dominant performance against the opponent’s starter, then kind of just sat with
that production. Not that it’s a bad thing, because for the sixth straight game
this lineup managed to top the five-run mark. This time, it was Tillman on the
other end of it, and it’s clear that he just doesn’t have it any more. He wasn’t
anywhere close to his spots, either missing the zone by (seemingly)
ten feet on every pitch or throwing fat off-speed pitches right into the heart
of the zone. Unsurprisingly, the Sox took advantage.
Betts led things off with a
walk, and then Mitch Moreland moved him over to third with a single to put
runners on the corners. J.D. Martinez then knocked in the first run of the game
with a sacrifice fly, and Devers followed that up with a double to snap his
three-game hitless streak and put runners on the corners. Nuñez then had the
biggest swing of the day, smashing a three-run homer into the Monster seats on a
fastball in the upper-third of the zone to give the Sox a 4-1 lead.
The damage just continued
into the second when Tzu-Wei Lin and Betts hit back-to-back doubles to get one
more. The Red Sox would tally another in the third, though it could have been
more. Boston loaded the bases before recording an out in that inning and
Tillman was lifted after the bases became full of Red Sox. But they only got
one run on a wild pitch. Still, it was a 6-1 lead after
three, so it was hard to be too upset. The offense didn’t do much beyond this,
scoring just one more run in the game, this one also coming on a wild pitch with
a runner on third base.
So, it was up to the bullpen to protect a six-run lead over
the last three innings of the game, and Heath Hembree got the first call. He
didn’t exactly do his job, though he still left with the lead. Baltimore was
able to get a couple of singles ahead of Manny Machado, and the superstar
infielder smacked a two-RBI double to cut the lead to four and bring up Jonathan
Schoop with a runner in scoring position. Hembree settled down, though, and blew
three fastballs by the Orioles second baseman to end the threat.
The eighth inning belonged to Joe Kelly, who
unsurprisingly came to the mound to loud cheers from the Fenway crowd. The
righty tossed a perfect 1-2-3 inning with one strikeout. That brought out Matt
Barnes for the ninth, and he got through a scoreless frame to end the night.
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