The bats were a little quiet tonight. The run total was good (5), but that came on 5 hits and the help of 4 walks. The only players with hits in this game for the Red Sox were Daniel Nava, Jacoby Ellsbury and Salty. Fortunately, all 5 hits were for extra bases as Ellsbury hit a triple and Nava hit a home run. Salty had an exceptional game going 3 for 4 with a homer and two doubles to his credit. Shane Victorino had a sacrifice fly for an RBI. JBJ managed to work a walk. Stephen Drew went 0 for 4 in his Red Sox debut. I wonder how badly Drew would have to struggle before they would bring back Iglesias. Will Middlebrooks went 0 for 4 and seems to have cooled off again. Mike Napoli went 0 for 3, but managed to work a walk. Pedroia was also 0 for 3 with a walk. It's a shame that so many guys were no shows on offense tonight. They might have been able to provide the insurance runs that would have made Hanrahan's meltdown irrelevant or maybe he wouldn't have come in at all.
HITTING GRADE: B
I remember thinking that when the rain delay hit that Ryan Dempster sort of got bailed out of this game. He looked like he got knocked around pretty good, but when you look at this final stat line it's not all that bad: 5 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 7 K. He hit some bad breaks with errors in the field that ended up costing him runs (hence the 3 runs given up, but only one earned run). I'm not sure how much more he would have pitched without the rain delay, he was already up to 93 pitches after 5 innings.
STARTING PITCHING GRADE: C+
If you take Joel Hanrahan out of the equation, this bullpen had a lights out performance combining for 3 1/3 innings, no hits, no runs, one walk and 6 strikeouts. Unfortunately, this was one of those, "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?" situations. Have I mentioned that I like Koji Uehara? He pitched another hitless/scoreless inning last night, just like his two earlier appearances this season. Tazawa bounced back nicely from his previous appearance where he blew the save, but lucked into getting the win anyways. Andrew Bailey allowed a walk, but recorded two strikeouts in his one inning of work. That's one hit in 4 appearances for Bailey this season. Joel Hanrahan came in to close with a two run cushion in the ninth. Just like in his last appearance against the O's on Monday, Hanrahan immediately surrendered a lead off solo home run. Unlike Monday, however, Hanrahan didn't collect the necessary 3 outs and collect the save. He got the next two batters with a strike out and foul out, but then he imploded with two outs. It started innocently enough with a single to Ryan Flaherty. It's worth noting that Flaherty had struck out in his 3 previous at bats this game and this was his first hit of the season. Alexi Casilla would come on to run for Flaherty in the one run game and immediately steal second. Salty overthrew second by a mile, but Casilla wasn't able to capitalize on the bad throw and stayed at second. Then Hanrahan issued back to back walks to Nolan Reimold and Nate McLouth to load the bases. Still, all Hanrahan needed was to collect the final out to collect his fourth save. This is when Hanrahan threw a wild pitch to allow Casilla to score from third and tie the game. Still, this was a tie game and certainly winnable. Hanrahan couldn't compose himself and gave up the back breaking 3-run home run on the next pitch. Hanrahan was pulled in favor of Andrew Miller. Miller collected the final out on 6 pitches with a strikeout. If I was giving out individual grades Uehara, Bailey, Tazawa and Miller would all get A's and Hanrahan would get the F, unfortunately Hanrahan tanked the bullpen's performance as a whole.
BULLPEN GRADE: F
No comments:
Post a Comment