The Red Sox and Tigers are locked in a scoreless tie in Game 6 of the ALCS, with Clay Buchholz and Max Scherzer putting up matching zeroes through three innings of baseball. But a few inches are all that have kept the Red Sox from a 3-0 lead.
Neither Clay Buchholz nor Max Scherzer has been perfect. Buchholz has had some inconsistency with his secondary offerings--though his curveball has been out-of-this-world since the first--and Scherzer has already allowed three walks. But it's the Red Sox who put up the biggest threat.
Said threat came in the third inning, when Max Scherzer led off the frame with walks of Xander Bogaerts and Jacoby Ellsbury. Shane Victorino came to the plate, took ball one, and then tried to drop down a bunt. Instead, he popped it up--a terrible waste of an out in a big situation.
Still, with one swing of the bat, it looked like Dustin Pedroia might have made up for Victorino's mistake in a big way, jumping on a first-pitch slider and sending it a mile into the Fenway night. Baseball, however, is a game of inches, and Pedroia missed by about three, the ball hooking just foul past the pole. Four pitches later, and Pedroia hit a ground ball straight to third for the easy double play.
Still, for all that he's out of the inning, Scherzer knows just how close he came to disaster:
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