When a team is in a prolonged slump, we often talk about the "stopper"--the one pitcher who can come out and end the run with a dominant performance. Tonight, on the back of two straight wins (a depressingly major event for this team), the Sox now have to fear a stopper.
No, not the Twins', but their own. Because if there's one starter who can come out and ruin their good run with a terrible outing, right now that man is Clay Buchholz. With seventeen earned runs in seven innings, the Sox would need another double digit scoring effort to survive if Buchholz stayed true to form in tonight's outing.
And against Liam Hendriks, it's not clear that will be as easy as it was against Blackburn. While you can't read anything much into Hendriks' good start to the year, we can say that he's a relatively new look for the lineup--something they struggle against often as not--and is not a complete junkballer like the previous two pitchers.
Go Sox!