Red Sox 5, Northeastern 2: Stars quiet, but Red Sox take first half of doubleheader

The Boston Red Sox have won their first game of 2014, defeating the Northeastern Huskies 5-2 in seven innings. It's not the most glamorous of starts to the defense of their World Series championship, if you can call it that at all, but it's where every Red Sox season starts: with a victory over college opposition.

This time the heavy lifting (again, if you can call it that) was done not by the stars. Despite the presence of seven regulars from 2013 in the starting lineup, the Red Sox picked up only six hits all day, with two coming from Ryan Lavarnway, and another from Scott Cousins. Dustin Pedroia, Mike Napoli, and Jackie Bradley Jr. had the knocks for the usual crew, but Pedroia had the dubious honor of being the first Boston strikeout of the day, falling victim to one James Mulry. If that wasn't surprising enough, Mulry proceeded to fan David Ortiz immediately thereafter!

Mulry, however, was not up to the task of holding the lead forever. While he only surrendered four of those six hits in his four innings of work, he was responsible for just as many walks, and the Red Sox took advantage. Jonathan Herrera was the first to do so, scoring the opening run of the game on Jayson Hernandez' ground out in the fifth.

The Huskies would actually briefly manage to take a lead off of Noe Ramirez in the top of the sixth, but disaster was averted when Deven Marrero and Mike McCoy drew walks to start off the bottom half of the inning. The Sox would proceed to put up a bit of a conga line, with Scott Cousins providing the exclamation mark triple to the inning.

Noe Ramirez was the only pitcher who would find himself touched up. Brandon Workman started the game allowing one hit in two scoreless innings, with Burke Badenhop, Henry Owens, and Shunsuke Watanabe adding three more. Keith Couch finished the game off with a clean frame in the seventh.

More important than the score, though, the Red Sox are now through one game of spring training with no serious injuries to report. With the second half providing few opportunities for important players to hurt themselves, it's looking like a successful Thursday.