FanPost

Sox Take Pounding in Worrying Loss

August 5

Skubal pitches for the Tigers against Pérez, who starts just terribly, allowing a leadoff home run to Robbie Grossman three pitches into the bottom of the first. Detroit takes a 1-0 on Grossman’s seventeenth of the year. I guess the Sox didn’t like having the lead right out of the chute last night, because they’ll be playing catchup today! With two out, Haase doubles to right-center. This is an inauspicious start given what this team is supposedly aiming for. A strikeout ends the inning. Reyes leads off the bottom of the second with a triple to right-center, and he scores on Short’s sac fly to make it 2-0. The next two batters reach to put two in scoring position, and now the Tigers have a chance to bust the game open early. After just 35 pitches, Valdez starts to warm up. Now you know this will be a rough afternoon. The starter may not even make it through two. Grossman is hit by a pitch, loading up the bases and drawing booing from the audience. I’m not sure why. It’s only 2-0, and the hit was clearly an accident. He would have done more than just clip him if that had been on purpose. Plus, he had no incentive to do that, and he’s done for the afternoon before the next batter. 1.1 innings is not what was expected for Pérez today. He allows more hits (5) than men put out (4). Anybody else yearning for Chris Sale? A groundout brings in another run to make it 3-0, but Valdez limits the damage to just that. Verdugo doubles to the gap in left-center with two out inb the top of the fourth, which is a milestone for him: 100 extra-base hits in his career. Of course, he got the majority of those while with the highly-successful LA Dodgers, but when your team is doing this poorly, you don’t really think that hard about that stuff. Just take what you can get and run. Dalbec grounds out to strand him, which I fear will come back to bite the Sox, from what we’ve seen of late. The Tigers put two on with two out in the bottom of the fifth, setting up Candelario’s ground-rule double to center that scores Schoop and makes it 4-0. A comeback is still possible, but it’s not probable with Boston’s offense that sleepwalked through the last two series. Reyes triples to the gap in right-center immediately after to bring the runners in and make it 6-0. It’s his second triple of the afternoon. A strikeout ends the inning at last, but the metaphorical sun is already starting to set.

Verdugo makes a sliding dive for the first out of the bottom of the sixth. With two out, Baddoo doubles to center. He scores on a single to center by Schoop as the Tigers go up by seven. A single to center by Candelario puts runners at the corners before Haase scores on a force out. It’s 8-0! The Tigers put runners at the corners again and force a pitching change. A pop out finally ends the inning. The Sox load the bases with one out in the eighth, which is the first legitimate chance they’ve had all afternoon. Verdugo’s sac fly breaks the shutout when Cordero finally comes home to make it 8-1, a small consolation for a slumping club and its fans. A pop out ends the inning. 8-1 is the final. The only bright spot for this is that it wasn’t a sweep. I’m a little afraid of this, honestly, because next up is Toronto’s high-octane lineup. If the Sox put in the kind of effort up there that they showed in Detroit, they’re going to get torn to shreds! They could have easily made this a better showing. They left 11 guys on base. Don’t feel bad for them in the least, because this was entirely self-inflicted. That’s more than just a little sad that we just dropped two of three to a team that’s now 53-58. What will happen down the stretch? If we keep doing this, we’ll be fighting for our lives in a month. Flashbacks to 2011, anyone?