Sox Roll Behind Victor and Beltre's Big Nights
by Ben Buchanan on Jun 1, 2010 11:11 PM EDT
in Game Stories
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PrintFor a while, this one looked really bad. John Lackey was in trouble again, the Red Sox were stranding baserunners again. Basically, for the first half of the game, it looked like April!
But then suddenly, in the bottom of the 5th (the halfway point of the game), everything turned around.
With 2 outs, 2 on, and the Red Sox seemingly ready to pull their same old disappearing act, Adrian Beltre turned everything around, launching a Gio Gonzalez curveball up and into the monster seats on a line.
The Sox, now within 1 and smelling blood, wasted no time getting to the bullpen. The Sox put up 2 more runs against wild and ineffective A's relievers, then another in the 7th, and 3 more in the 8th. By the time all was said and done, it was 9-4. Victor Martinez, for his part, went a perfect 5-5 with 4 doubles, while Adrian Beltre had 2 more hits on the night.
It was not a pretty night for John Lackey, who allowed all 4 of the A's runs, or the defense, who didn't exactly give Lackey the best support. But he missed a few more bats than usual, and only gave up a couple of walks--really, it was generally an improvement, and it was enough to keep the Sox in the game. The resurgent Manny Delcarmen combined with Daniel Bard and Joe Nelson to pitch the final 3 innings, allowing only one baserunner.
Also, we're implementing a new feature: The Game Thread Roll Call. How do you rank amongst the top posters in the open threads?
| RockEmSoxEm | 191 |
| BoldandBrash | 139 |
| Pesky Fan | 128 |
| Maeamian | 68 |
| bestbostonsports | 63 |
There's your top-5 (non-moderator *cough*) posters for tonight. This'll be a regular addition to the game recap from now on...If I remember to do 'em.
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Woo! Forth!
I found this interesting from Amalie Benjamin’s twitter
In fact, all three times a catcher has hit four doubles in a game, it happened at Fenway. Strange, but true.
She's strange but true...
I don’t know. Just felt right to say.
SB Nation's Boston Red Sox community:
OverTheMonster.com
Follow this guy on Twitter: @RCBooth
Dang A's, can't trust em to hold a lead.
And the Jays! damn that’s one we both coulda used. Did you guys see Maddon’s shit fit? Funny stuff cept the Rays won.
Top commentors, eh? I may have win one of these things.
"We're only going to score 17 points?"
I wasn't that surpised by the comeback
A’s pitch count was high early. I thought their starter would tire and give us some runs. Didn’t know their bullpen one way or the other. They can’t actually be this bad, but low salary teams rarely have stellar bullpens (got to save money somewhere)
Haha! 63 posts from the road, I am amazing.
Well, now I have something to shoot for!
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by bestbostonsports on Jun 2, 2010 3:00 AM EDT reply actions
Who knows?
it was a joke anyhow
Join the NLL community at http://www.nationallacrosseleagueblog.blogspot.com/
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by bestbostonsports on Jun 2, 2010 3:17 PM EDT up reply actions
On Lackey
Lackey definitely continued to struggle with missing bats (as indicated all year by his relative-to-his-career-avg low K numbers). Gave up a lot of hits.
But he kept his walk numbers and the ball low and seemed to stay ‘in control’ whenever he had guys on base. 4 runs looks bad when it was 4-0, but 4 runs in 6 full is still keeping your team in the game.
If Hall doesn’t misplay that wall ball double, then Lackey probably gets out of that game with only 2 runs in 6 innings.
Lackey
is a ground ball pitcher. When he keeps the ball down, he wins. He’s having a rough time with it though because even when he hits his spots, his pitches look like beach balls. His ball is fat, and even though he didn’t give up alot of runs, he gave up a lot of hits and was constantly reeling. He needs to sharpen up his pitches a little and make that ball, and maybe his gut….less fat.
Whoever said it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, probably lost.
by David Harnden on Jun 2, 2010 11:35 AM EDT up reply actions
Yeah, I tend to agree
the ‘good sign’ is I don’t see any indication of injuries and a lot of what we are talking about seems correctable through mechanics. ‘Hard for me to say about his conditioning since I don’t know what his playing weight has been. He doesn’t look any fatter than I remember when he was with the Angels. But I have no hard data there.
Lackey is at least not the kind of pitcher who, if he doesn’t have a 95 mph fastball completely goes to pieces. Even though the numbers haven’t been good, he does seem to have the wherewithal and pitch variety to at least grind out innings. He’s definitely a pitcher and not just a thrower.
It’s still early. If he and Farrell can work out a correction and get some more movement on that fastball then I think his results should look better by the end of the year.
We need someone in the non-Lester/Buchholz part of order to get straightened out. Just one. Then we’ll be fine.
Good enough
While Lackey is off to a bit of a slow start, and gave up 12 hits in 6 innings, he showed his professionalism and talent by hanging in there and giving the team a chance to win. He got out of a bases loaded no-out situation early and gave the team 6 innings.
I’ll take it.
On Victor - amazing what one game in the spring can do for your numbers
Before & after yesterday, V-Mart’s numbers. Heck, look at where he was just 2 weeks ago:
BA OBP SLG OPS
5/15 .226 .285 .338 .623
5/29 .257 .311 .449 .760
6/1 .279 .330 .488 .818
Still has a bit to go before he climbs back completely to his career averages, so more good stuff still to come.
I was at the game last night
I was a little worried after Lackey gave up the HR to right and he was missing his spots, but then once we chased Gonzalez, the bats woke up. Nice comeback win for the Sox to start June.
Also, sitting in RF, it was hard to tell, but did Hall catch the ball that was called a single (I think it was in the 2nd/3rd)? I thought that he caught it, but was it really a trap? I know that’s a very specific play, but maybe NESN caught it from a different angle. Thanks!
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