Jackie Bradley Jr looked about as good as you possibly can without recording a hit. He made a great catch in left, playing out of his usual position in center field. He worked 3 walks, for me that shows a lot of restraint and composure for a kid who just made the jump from AA Portland to Fenway Park. The temptation to be overly aggressive in your first big league game and your whole family watching in the stands must have been tremendous. Even his outs managed to be productive as he recorded an RBI. There were some other bright spots as well.
Jon Lester wasn't a dominant ace with a statline of 5 IP 2 ER 5 H 2 BB 7 K. He wasn't getting out of innings quickly and got up to 96 pitches after just 5 innings before handing the game over to the bullpen. Still, he kept them to 2 runs and put the Red Sox in a position to win. It was a solid performance and I'll take it.
STARTING PITCHING GRADE: B-
He kept them in the game, but fell short of a quality start and let his pitch count climb too high.
With a scheduled off day today John Farrell used his bullpen liberally. Ultimately he used 5 pitchers for the remaining 4 innings. Koji Uehara took down the 6th inning in impressive fashion in his first game in a Red Sox uniform, retiring all 3 batters with just 5 pitches. Andrew Miller and Andrew Bailey split the 7th inning with Miller mixing two walks with two strikeouts before having Bailey coming in to finish the job with a third strikeout. Junichi Tazawa gave up 1 hit in his inning of work in the 8th inning. This caused some people to speculate that Tazawa may be given the role as 8th inning set up man role that most had assumed would belong to Andrew Bailey. New closer Joel Hanrahan did well in the 9th in a non-save situation. A very good showing for the bullpen outside of those two walks issued by Miller.
BULLPEN GRADE: A-
Eating 4 innings and giving up zero runs and one hit is a good day. The only cause for concern was Andrew Miller's 2 free passes in the 7th.
Jacoby Ellsbury looked great going 3 for 6 with a triple and 2 RBIs. Jose Iglesias has gotten lost in the shuffle with Ciriaco's emergence last year and the hype surrounding Xander Bogaerts in the minors, but he had a great day yesterday going 3 for 5 with an RBI. The fact that Iglesias' hits were all just well placed ground ball singles gives me some cause for concern, but we'll see. Shane Victorino looked good in his Red Sox debut recording 3 RBIs on 2 hits. Salty looked good going 1 for 2 with 3 walks. Jonny Gomes had a good day going 2 for 4 with a walk also. Dustin Pedroia recorded a solid 2 for 6 day with and RBI. The only real let downs were the middle of the order power hitters Mike Napoli and Will Middlebrooks. They went a combined 0 for 9 with Middlebrooks drawing a walk.
HITTING GRADE: A-
Putting up 8 runs in a game started by CC Sabathia sounds pretty good, but CC looked like a guy recovering from off season surgery and his velocity was noticeably down from his career norms. Joba Chamberlain also looked terrible. They did a nice job manufacturing runs without any home runs and no help from the middle of the lineup.
The Yankees might be in serious trouble this season. Their lineup has no teeth without guys like Texiera and the ace of their pitching staff looked very shaky out their on the mound. The AL East could be wide open this year.
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