Red Sox 1, Rays 3: Glasnow Dominates Sox Bats

Here’s all you need to know about the game tonight: Mauricio Llovera was the best player in a Red Sox uniform.

Oh, what, you demand more? Fine, here are some things:

• Nick Pivetta had his moments (and got some calls) but struggled to keep runners off base and failed to make it through five innings, because making it through five innings has become the baseball equivalent of inventing a perpetual motion machine for the Sox pitching staff.
• Tyler Glasnow also had his moments — fourteen of them, to be exact, as in FOURTEEN STRIKEOUTS IN SIX INNINGS for the Rays. It was the most strikeouts a starter has recorded against the Sox since 2013. TWENTY THIRTEEN!
• Ironically in light of Glasnow’s outstanding pitching performance, three of the Sox five hits went for extra bases.
• Triston Casas managed one of those five hits to extend his hitting streak to 13 games. I love hitting streaks and I hate that Joe DiMaggio’s 56-gamer is so untouchable that that we can’t even dream of anyone ever breaking it. He faced FEWER than 56 pitchers during the entire streak! It’s completely impossible in today’s game!
• At one point in the fourth, the Red Sox failed to record an out after catching Osleivis Basabe in between second and third and forcing him into a rundown. When’s the last time you’ve seen a Major League team screw up a rundown? Enmanuel Valdez, who botched the play by throwing the ball at Nick Pivetta’s feet, is a shockingly bad infielder.
• Ceddanne Rafaela laced a pinch hit double in the eighth. Let’s just go ahead and start him every game for the rest of the season, huh?

Three Studs

1. Mauricio Llovera: 3 IP, 1 H, 1 BB, 1 K, 0 R

No more studs. Connor Wong had an RBI triple — and triples always deserve some love — but I want poor, embattled Mo to have a night all to himself.

Three Duds

1. Wilyer Abreu: 0-3, 3 K, and he pulled up on a difficult but catchable wall ball that knocked in the third run of the game for the Rays.
2. Justin Turner: 0-4, 4 K
3. Adam Duvall: 0-4, 4 K

Play Of The Game

With one out and the Sox leading 1-0 in the third, Rafael Devers hit a chopper up the middle that forced Osleivis Basabe to tumble to the ground and make a play from a full sitting position. Connor Wong, who was on third after giving the Sox the lead with a triple, somehow decided not to go home as this play glacially developed. Who knows how the rest of this game goes if the Sox had jump out to an early two-run lead?