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The Red Sox' tailspin has entered a new gear as the Blue Jays blew them out of Fenway Park by a margin of 12-4 with homer after homer.
If you've been watching the Red Sox this past week, you can pretty much write this recap yourself. There are two types of Red Sox games these days, after all. Those where the pitching is good, and those where the pitching is bad. Based on the double digit runs scored by the Blue Jays, you may have guessed that the pitching was, indeed, bad.
It all started with Ryan Dempster, who simply couldn't keep the ball down in the zone. While he managed to escape damage in the first inning despite a high pitch total, he would not be so lucky in the second. A pair of two-out hits left the Sox behind 2-0 very early on.
From there, the Blue Jays started piling on the homers. Dempster's first pitch of the third was launched over the Monster by Jose Bautista for a third run, and in the fourth it was Emilio Bonifacio hooking one into the bullpen and leaving Shane Victorino laid out after a collision with the wall. He would stay in the game to watch Dempster allow a third shot in the fifth to Edwin Encarnacion. Dempster would not come back out for the sixth, ending his day with five innings pitched and six earned runs.
Andrew Miller and Clayton Mortensen, however, picked up right where he left off. Miller surrendered a solo shot to Brett Lawrie, the first batter he faced in the sixth, then after a sacrifice fly made it eight runs for Toronto, Buatista smashed his second homer of the game to make it ten.
The Red Sox' offense, on the other hand, did exactly what they've done this last week: stranded runners in scoring position. The Sox would go 0-for-8 with RISP over the course of the game, extending their streak to 20 hitless at bats with at least one runner in scoring position. Only Daniel Nava's sacrifice fly and Jarrod Saltalamacchia's ground ball in the sixth resulted in so much as a run. They would add another pair via the home run, one from Mike Napoli in the early innings, another from Pedro Ciriaco later on, but at no point did any Red Sox run really make a difference in the tone of the game. It seemed lost before Napoli homered, and truly was lost by the time the Sox scored their second.
The good news is the Red Sox don't play tomorrow. Right about now that is merciful indeed.
Read more Red Sox:
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