Orioles 3 Red Sox 2

Another disappointing loss for the Red Sox as they dropped their first series of the season.

Just a very slow night offensively for the Red Sox as they only managed to score 2 runs. Ellsbury went 1 for 5 from the leadoff spot. Shane Victorino had a good game with two singles and an outfield assist to bail Aceves out of a first inning double when Manny Machado got greedy and tried to stretch it to a triple. Victorino's arm has been a pleasant surprise this season. Dustin Pedroia went 1 for 4 with an RBI single. Mike Napoli also had a good game going 2 for 4 with two singles and an RBI. Will Middlebrooks was a black hole in the lineup going 0 for 4 and failing to reach base. Daniel Nava had a 1 for 4 night. Salty had a 0 for 4 night with three strikeouts. Salty seems to be either very good or very bad on a given night and never just mediocre. Stephen Drew collected a single for his first hit in a Red Sox uniform. Drew also worked the only two walks given up by Orioles pitching in this game. Jackie Bradley Jr. went 0 for 2 before being pinch hit for by Jonny Gomes in the 7th. Gomes didn't fare any better also going 0 for 2. I think it will be easy to send Bradley back down when David Ortiz gets back. He's had some bright spots like that nice catch he made in the 1st inning of this game, but his hitting is nowhere near what we were seeing in spring training. (.120 BA/ .313 OBP/ .160 SLG). You're going to need more than two runs to win most ballgames and you should be able to put up more runs on a guy like Chris Tillman (Career 4.80 ERA, Gave up 5 ER in 3 2/3 IP in his last start). It's funny that after last night's performance where all 5 hits were extra base hits, tonight all 8 hits were singles.
BATTING GRADE: D

Like BMack pointed out in his preview. Aceves is a wild card. Sometimes he's an ace and sometimes he's a deuce. This wasn't a bad outing for Aceves going 5 IP, 6 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, 4 K. It's along the lines of what I would expect from Doubront, Lackey or Dempster had they gotten the start. He was the beneficiary of a nice outfield assist from Shane Victorino and a great catch by Jackie Bradley Jr. to get out of the first inning without surrendering a run. I'll certainly take Aceves' performance given that he was making a spot start.
STARTING PITCHING GRADE: C+

Clayton Mortensen came on in the 6th and pitched a 1-2-3 6th inning. He came back out in the 7th and quickly recorded the first two outs before giving up a single to Manny Machado. Andrew Miller came in and walked Nick Markakis. Miller was pulled for Koji Uehara. Adam Jones hit a double off of Uehara to score Machado from second and making Clayton Mortensen the hard luck loser. Uehara gave the intentional walk to Chris Davis before getting Matt Weiters to fly out to end the inning. The stat sheet places the blame on Mortensen, but it was Andrew Miller who advanced the runner and Uehara who gave up the hit that scored the run. It was a group failure that gave the Orioles the tie-breaking run. Tazawa allowed a single and the runner advanced on a wild pitch, but he kept them off the scoreboard in his one inning of work. Alex Wilson was called up from Pawtucket when John Lackey was placed on the DL to take Alfredo Aceves' spot in the bullpen and made his major league debut in the 9th of a tight 1-run game. He gave up a leadoff walk to Manny Machado, but managed to induce the double play to get Machado and Markakis and struck out Adam Jones to wrap up his one inning of work. Not bad for his major league debut in a tough spot. All in all the bullpen had to eat 4 innings and only gave up one run. Not a bad performance, but unfortunately that one run made all the difference.
BULLPEN GRADE: B-

Orioles @ Red Sox Preview

Red Sox had yesterday's game won, and then the bullpen blew it. Now they have to hope converted RP Aceves can get them a win. I really don't like Aceves. I am tired of him being an asshole, and I really have nop idea what he is going to do today. He is just as likelt to go 6 innings allowing 1 run, as he is going 2 innings allowing 10.

Going against him is Tillman. He 1-0 with a 1.52 ERA in his last four starts against the Red Sox, but couldn't even make it out of the 4th inning in his last start.

I don't like this game at all for the Red Sox. I could be wrong, but I think Aceves is washed up and this could get ugly today.

Red Sox lose 8-6
Player of the Game: Davis
Game starts at 7:10pm

Red Sox Grades

The Red Sox suffered their first major pitching meltdown of the season. It was inevitable, but I didn't expect it to come from our all-star closer. There's a little other blame that can go around, but I'm putting most of this loss on Hanrahan's shoulders. Maybe it was the rain, but the Red Sox also committed their first two errors of the season, both were costly errors that lead to runs. Hopefully this doesn't ruin Hanrahan's confidence. He had been doing reasonably well prior to this. This was also the end of the Fenway sell out streak. It's sort of a shame that it ended with this team rather than the shit show last season like it should have.

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

8 Baltimore, 5 Red Sox

I can take a loss like this. Championships will have bumps in the road when your striving to it. Joel Hanrahan had a bad game...... whatever. Not a big deal.

The positives are that Ryan Dempster had a pretty decent outing with 5 innings, 1 ER, 7 Ks and then the crazy 88's in Uehara and Taz both pitched hitless innings with 2 Ks each and Bailey (despite the walk) pitched pretty well.

If this becomes an issue with Hanrahan I would feel comfortable making any of those guys the closer.

So is Nava going to be the next hype train guy the Sox are going to pump up, dude has cranked the ball since being in there for Jackie Bradley Jr.

It sucks we blew the game, but like I can say, the positives heavily outweighed the negatives in this game.

Still winning the championship.

Orioles @ Red Sox Preview

Things could get crazy at Fenway tonight, as two pitchers with bad histories at Fenway faceoff. Dempster has a  6.06 ERA in three career starts at Fenway Park, and Arrieta has a 8.53 ERA there.

It should be noted that the last time Dempster played at Fenway was last year and he let up 0 runs over 6 2/3 innings, and all the other games played at Fenway were in the early 2000's. In his first game with the Red Sox this year, he wasn't bad going 5 innings allowing 3 runs against the Red Sox. He had 8 Ks in that game, but also 4 BB, which is kind of shocking as he is known as more of a control type of guy.

Arrieta at one time was a top pitching prospect, but now he is 27 and really has never put it together. He is 0-3 with a 6.00 ERA against the Red Sox and I think the Red Sox are going to pounce all over him again tonight.

The Orioles have a good lineup, and I think they will get some runs off Dempster, but he will limit the damage much more than Arrieta will.

Red Sox win 8-5
Player of the Game: Ellsbury
Game starts at 7:10pm

Red Sox Lineup:
Jaccoby Ellsbury CF
Shane Victorino RF
Dustin Pedroia 2B
Mike Napoli 1B
Will Middlebrooks 3B
Daniel Nava DH
Jarrod Saltalamacchia C
Stephen Drew SS
Jackie Bradley LF

Red Sox 3 Orioles 1

The Red Sox are off to a 5-2 start and are looking better than I think anybody would have guessed in their first seven games. The pitching has vastly improved and the hitting hasn't dropped off as much as I would have guessed after losing Adrian Gonzalez. Everything is clicking right now and the excitement and optimism of the fan base is building. Yesterday afternoon the Red Sox beat the Orioles on opening day. The winning runs came on a 3 run home run in the 7th and Buchholz pitched a gem and the bullpen finished the job.

Many people were critical of the Red Sox decision to bench Jackie Bradley Jr. for opening day, but it couldn't have worked out better for the Red Sox. Daniel Nava was 2 for 2 and drew a walk in his 3 at bats. One of those hits was the 3-run home run that won the game for the Red Sox. The Captain has been critical of this team for being guided by their PR department instead of their baseball people. I think that benching such a popular player in the home opener might indicate that this is not the case anymore. Pedroia had a solid night going 1 for 2 with a walk. Napoli had a double and Victorino had a single. Everybody else on the team failed to get on base. It was nice that in a game where they didn't get many opportunities to score, when there were two runners on Nava managed to get the big hit to bring them in. It was clutch.
BATTING GRADE: C

Buchholz and Lester look dramatically improved from their performances last season. Buchholz's stat line is pretty impressive: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 4 BB, 8 K, 113 Pitches. He got into a little trouble in the third by giving up back to back singles with two outs, but he got the third out to get out of the jam. I wonder how much of the turnaround by Buchholz is because of the return of his old pitching coach John Farrell.
STARTING PITCHING GRADE: A

Despite not giving up any runs, Buchholz's pitch count was climbing at 113 through 7, so Andrew Bailey came in to protect a 3-run lead in the 8th. Bailey didn't disappoint, collecting two strikeouts and a fly out on 14 pitches to pick up his 3rd hold in 3 appearances. In Bailey's 2.1 IP over 3 appearances he's given up only one hit and one walk and no runs and looks like the player we thought we were getting from the A's when we gave them Josh Reddick. Hanrahan came on in the 9th to close out the game. This was Hanrahan's shakiest appearance this season allowing the game's only run on a leadoff home run and a 2 out double to bring the tying run to the plate. Fortunately, Hanrahan got Ryan Flaherty to foul out to wrap up the game and collected his third save.
BULLPEN GRADE: C+

Orioles @ Red Sox Preview

After the homerun party yesterday the Red Sox are having their best start in 7 years. It's opening day at Fenway, and it will be a packed house. Funny, the guy they are probably coming to see (Bradley) is getting the day off.

Buchholz is on the hill today and he had a very nice first start to the season going 7 inning allowing just 1 run in a win against the Yankees. He has also been very good against the Orioles in his career going 7-3 with a 3.64 ERA, and he's 3-1 with a 2.04 ERA in six career home starts against the Orioles. So things are looking good for him today.

Wei-Yin Chen had a solid start to his sophomore campaign going 5 2/3 innings allowing 2 runs. He has been good against the Red Sox going 2-0 with a 2.50 ERA.

I think Boston's bats stay hot today, and the Red Sox win and win big.

Red Sox win 7-2
Player of the Game: Buchholz/Iglesias
Game starts at 2pm