Red Sox Grades: Red Sox 9, A's 6

The A's are arguably the best team the Red Sox have faced so far this season. They were off to a comparable start to the Red Sox and won the AL West last season. A.J. Griffin went 7-1 last season in 15 starts and was 2-0 with a 2.25 ERA. This was one of those "Who's the top dog in the AL?" sort of games. The Red Sox rocked Griffin for 9 runs with a 3-run shot from Middlebrooks and a grand slam from Napoli. They literally doubled Griffin's ERA to 4.50 overnight. They finally were able to deliver a knockout blow and capitalize on the A's mistakes. Great teams capitalize on mistakes, shut the door and when one part of the team isn't doing so great another part steps up to compensate. The Red Sox have been reliant on their pitching to get by for the most part this year, but when the pitching was mediocre in this game the bats picked up the slack. It's also always nice to force an opposing bullpen to eat 4 innings in the first game of a series as it may limit their options in the remaining 2 games. A very encouraging win after dropping two games in that doubleheader to the Royals.

This was Doubront's best start of the season thus far. He went deeper into this game than his two previous starts and kept the run total low. This is more impressive considering that the A's lead the AL in runs scored this season. If he had wrapped up the 7th inning he would have had a quality start, but his pitch count was up to 113 when they pulled him from the game. It's nice to be getting this kind of production out of the back of your starting rotation.
STARTING PITCHING GRADE: B+

Doubront handed off the 7th inning to Clayton Mortensen with two outs and nobody on base. Mortensen wrapped up the 7th without an issue but hit some trouble in the 8th. A walk, a hit batter and back to back doubles cut the Red Sox lead to 3 in hurry. Alex Wilson came in with Josh Reddick on 2nd and 1 out. Wilson walked a batter and was pulled for Tazawa. It was scary to see the tying run come to the plate in a game where the Red Sox scored 9 runs, but Tazawa got the next two batters to end the inning. Andrew Bailey came on for the 9th and allowed a leadoff walk but got the next three batters to end the game and pick up his fourth save. Outside of Mortensen's mini-meltdown and Alex Wilson's one batter the bullpen wrapped up this game reasonably efficiently.
BULLPEN GRADE: C

I mentioned earlier that A.J. Griffin is typically a solid pitcher, but the Red Sox nailed him hard in two innings. Ortiz and Napoli went back to back with doubles to get on the board in the 2nd inning. In the fourth the Red Sox gave themselves some breathing room with a 3-run shot from Will Middlebrooks. The 5th is when they really broke this game open. Shane Victorino lead things off with a single. Pedroia hit what was most likely going to be a double play ball, but Andy Parrino bobbled the catch and dropped the ball and everybody was safe. David Ortiz worked a walk to load the bases and Mike Napoli hit the grand slam to make it 8-3. Daniel Nava hit into an out, but another error had him safe at first. At this point absolutely nothing was going right for Griffin and they pulled him from the game. Another run scored on a double from Salty. The double from Salty was the last hit the Red Sox would have in this game. The Red Sox would reload the bases with walks to Victorino and Ellsbury, but no more runs would score. Just about everybody in the lineup managed to contribute something this game, but Mike Napoli was an absolute beast going 2 for 4 with 5 RBIs. The only Red Sox player to go hitless this game was Dustin Pedroia and even he managed to reach on error and score a run. the 3 for 11 with runners in scoring position and 8 men left on base is still concerning, but the big homers from Napoli and Middlebrooks really take the sting out of that.
HITTING GRADE: A+