JENNINGS: SOX MAKE RIGHT CALL TO STICK WITH SALE
Sticking with lefty the correct decision
DETROIT — By the time John Farrell left the dugout and walked to the mound, the damage was done and the moment had passed. One hundred and eight pitches, and the last one made all the difference.
Chris Sale handed Farrell the baseball and marched off the field. He was beaten, and so were the Red Sox.
“That was his game,” Farrell said. “That was his opportunity to shut the inning off.”
And that’s absolutely the way it should have been.
That’s the way you manage with a depleted lineup, an inexperienced bullpen and this generation’s version of Randy Johnson on the mound. You let Chris Sale decide the game. Either he gets the third out or he doesn’t, but you put the game in his hands.
That’s what Farrell did yesterday. His center fielder was hurt. His shortstop was stuck in Aruba. His designated hitter was sick with the flu.
His best hope was the big lefty who’d dominated the Tigers for seven-plus innings, matching and at times out-pitching a familiar foe in Justin Verlander. The game was tied 1-1 with two outs and the bases empty in the eighth. The bullpen was irrelevant at that point.
“That was Sale,” Farrell said. “He had that game under control. Even in the eighth inning.”
The three at-bats that made a difference?
First was Andrew Romine, a light-hitting utility man who went down to get just enough of a low slider, knocking it off the dirt and over third baseman Block Holt’s glove into left field for a double.
“It just kind of kicked up a little bit higher than I thought,” Holt said.
Next was Ian Kinsler, who’d homered in the sixth inning. He took a series of inside fastballs to draw a five-pitch walk. Farrell insisted Sale was pitching around him. Sale insisted no such thing.
“I don’t work around anybody,” he said.
And that’s why you stick with Sale, even after 107 pitches and especially with the tying run at second base, because the Red Sox got him for situations like this, and he’s built for situations like this.
There’s no such thing as a must-win game in April, and there’s no substitute for the pressure of October, but Sale is the Red Sox’ guy for better or worse. Keep him healthy, keep him on the mound, and trust him to deliver.
His final pitch of the game was a 95-mph fastball inside to Nicholas Castellanos, who yanked it through the left side for a go-ahead single. Half an hour later, the Sox had lost, 2-1, and Sale said he hadn’t checked the video to see whether it was a good pitch.
“Obviously not,” he said. “He hit it.”
Heath Hembree came in to record the final out, but the game was done at that point. The Red Sox couldn’t do anything in the top of the ninth, and they went home having lost 3-of-4.
In a tight game like that, you can’t help wondering whether a home run hitter like Hanley Ramirez might have made a difference. Or maybe a lineup-lengthening Silver Slugger like Xander Bogaerts. Or a quick lefthanded hitter like Jackie Bradley Jr.
The Red Sox were without all three, and whether it was the depleted lineup or Verlander’s dominance, the offense never got anything going. The Sox had four hits and scored their only run on a double play, a wasted opportunity that would sting in a tight game.
“They just got one more than we did,” Dustin Pedroia said.
In four of his past five starts, Sale has received one run or less of support while he was in the game. You can bet he expected that sort of thing to end when he got out of Chicago, but who would have expected the Red Sox lineup to be decimated like this?
“It’s tough. It’s part of it though,” Sale said. “You can sit here and try to find excuses all day long, you’ve just got to find a way to get it done no matter who you’re with or what you’ve got. I wish I would have been able to get it done today.”
Farrell’s been quoting an old saying the past few days: You do what you can with what you have where you are.
Yesterday in Detroit, the Red Sox had Sale, and they did what they could with him. If they’re lucky, they will have much bigger games in which they can stick with him in critical situations. Even when it doesn’t work out in April, you hope to give him that chance again in October.