Red Sox Open A Crucial 7-Game Homestand With Their 17th One-Run Loss Of The 2019 Season
I said it before the homestand — the Red Sox are all in.
Not the way that you’re thinking, no. Hear me out. If the 2019 season were a poker tournament, the Red Sox have been nowhere near becoming the chip leader, but they’ve folded time after time to at least stay alive. With this seven-game homestand against the Twins and Yankees, they’re all in. Heads up. That’s not to say they’re all in in terms of effort or deployment of their roster. But it’s seven games again division-leading teams that could wipe out their entire chip stack, effectively ending their season. They could survive, but they’ve gotta play their balls off. On Tuesday night, that’s not exactly what happened.
When you need to win, I would say that the most effective strategy is not to send statistically the worst pitcher in baseball to the mound, but it was Rick Porcello’s turn in the rotation and that’s sadly what he’s been this year. Suffering his 11th loss of the season, Porcello got tagged for six earned runs on eight hits, two of which were homers, in four innings. His ERA shot up to 5.63 on the year, the worst of any of the 67 qualified starters in Major League Baseball this season. It has been a rough go for the former Cy Young award winner and free agent-to-be.
In a 6-0 hole, the Red Sox bullpen stepped up, as six relievers shut out the potent Twins offense the rest of the way, which allowed Boston to climb back in this thing. Rafael Devers hit his 29th homer of the season and Andrew Benintendi flipped his 13th to the opposite field to make this a one-run game in the bottom of the 8th, but it wasn’t enough.
The Red Sox began the bottom of of the 9th with a leadoff single by Brock Holt, who was lifted for pinch runner Marco Hernandez. Gorkys Hernandez bunted the tying run over to second and that was the end of Boston’s attempt at tying this ballgame. Mookie Betts grounded out, and Devers struck out on a foul tip to end it. A swift kick to the nuts, indeed.
There have been a lot of those this year. By “those”, I mean winnable games. The Red Sox have lost 17 one-run games in 2019. Not that it applies to this game in particular, but they’ve also lost NINE games when LEADING after seven innings. That’s the Wild Card right there. They’ve lost nine games when leading after seven, and four games when leading after eight. At the very least, this team should be knocking at the door of the Wild Card and they’re not.
I know, I shouldn’t bring that up on a night when the bullpen was nails, but goddamnit the Red Sox are too talented to be 16 games back of first place and 5.5 games back of the second Wild Card. Whenever they’ve needed a big win to gain ground in the Wild Card, it feels like they’ve come up short. It’s extremely frustrating, especially when those losses come in very winnable games like Tuesday night.
They can still win the series, sure. But you’ve gotta win on nights when the teams ahead of you in the standings catch an L. This one obviously falls on Porcello, and I’m sure he was accountable as always after the game. I didn’t get to catch the postgame because I was watching Frank The Tank’s meltdown on Periscope after the greatest comeback in Nationals history against the Mets. Accountability has never been an issue for Porcello, but winning in 2019 has been.
Win the series and build some momentum before yet another four-game series against the Yankees.