Brad Ziegler Showcased His Cantaloupe-Sized Testicles In Red Sox Victory Last Night
The Red Sox bullpen has been getting a lot of shit lately, and rightfully so.
They came into last night with the second worst bullpen ERA in the MLB for the month of August (6.26), the second worst WHIP (1.74), and they were tied for the most walks per nine innings (5.87). With all that information in mind, forgive me if I wasn’t exactly feeling optimistic about a Red Sox victory when Clay Buchholz turned it over to the bullpen, trailing 2-1 in the fifth inning with a runner on and one out. That runner would eventually score after Robbie Ross Jr. allowed an RBI base hit to Michael Bourn, so it very much looked like a “here we go again” situation was about to unfold.
In the bottom half of that inning, the only active Hall of Famer in baseball history did what he does, as Sandy Leon hit his fifth home run of the year. I mean, tick tock. We’re 40 games into the Sandy Leon “hot streak”, and the motherfucker is still hitting .390 with a 1.075 OPS. Just for shits and giggles, this obviously isn’t a real qualifier, but out of the 360 players in the MLB with at least 130 plate appearances this year, Leon is first in batting average, and first in OPS. He also has the least frequent out rate in the MLB (51.6%).
You obviously can’t put any stock in the batting average and OPS, but that out rate is no joke. For comparison’s sake, 40 games would’ve taken him up to mid-to-late May if he started the season as the Red Sox everyday catcher. Mookie Betts is leading the MLB in at-bats, so I’ll use him as a measurement. Betts played his 40th game of the season on May 18. On May 18, the highest batting average was .395 by Daniel Murphy, so Leon would’ve been second in the MLB, and the highest OPS was 1.058, so Leon would’ve been first. Yeah.
Speaking of high batting averages, Andrew Benintendi was 2-for-3 in this one with a game-tying double, two batters after Leon’s fifth inning home run. Benintendi has played in 10 games so far, and he’s hitting .379 with an .868 OPS. Of the five games that he hasn’t gone hitless, four of those five have been multi-hit games. Brock Holt also went deep in this one, his sixth, which was a two-run dinger to extend Boston’s lead to 6-3.
That was a lead that I felt comfortable with against this Diamondbacks team. That was, until the top of the eighth inning when Matt Barnes proceeded to walk the bases loaded with nobody out. A little ironic that Craig Kimbrel walked the bases loaded on Tuesday night, and it was Barnes who saved his ass with a strikeout, and then Barnes does the same thing on Saturday night, and needed somebody to save his ass. Well, in Kimbrel’s case, he only needed Barnes to get one out, which he did via the strikeout. Barnes needed Brad Ziegler to get three outs, and he did. Ziegler recorded all three on strikeouts, only needing 10 pitches to do so, full on showcasing his cantaloupe-sized testicles at Fenway Park. Hopefully Ziegler’s masterful inning gets this Red Sox bullpen back on the right track.
Final score: Red Sox 6, Diamondbacks 3