No offense, Sale alone
Bats fail to help out ace
This indignity didn’t take long, and that might have been the only merciful thing about it. Practice makes perfect, and the Red Sox have become black belts and grandmasters of games like this.
Two hours and 21 minutes was all it took last night for the Red Sox to squander another Chris Sale gem. Sale pitched into the ninth inning, and until that final frame, he’d allowed just one unearned run.
When things unraveled at the very end, the Red Sox were left with a 3-0 loss that felt like a true blowout against the rival Yankees at Fenway Park.
The Sox have lost five of their past seven games and are now just one game above .500, which is more than they can say for their dominant left-hander.
Through his first five starts with the Red Sox, Sale has a 1.19 ERA. He also has a 1-2 record, because the Red Sox just can’t score him any runs.
“The only frustration would be toward myself,” Sale said. “I know what I need to do, and I just need to be better at it. I need to go out there and (do) better that last inning.”
Through his 372⁄3 3 Sale’s gotten just four runs of support this season. He has yet to exit a game with a lead.
Sale is off to one of the best starts in baseball. He leads the majors in strikeouts with 55, a number not even Pedro Martinez reached through his first five starts with the Red Sox. Sale is the third pitcher since 1913 to begin his Sox career with five starts of seven-plus innings and two or fewer earned runs.
But the Red Sox have not taken full advantage.
“Hopefully next time, we’ll go out there and score two, three in the first inning,” Xander Bogaerts said. “Those types of pitchers, you need three or two in the first inning, get them feeling even better about themselves and hopefully tack on some more runs afterward.”
This game looked like a pitching duel from the moment the starters were announced, and it lived up to that billing with each team leaning on its ace. Yankees top starter Masahiro Tanaka finished off his complete game with three strikeouts while walking none and generating 15 groundball outs. He needed just 97 pitches to finish the game and allowed one runner into scoring position.
“He was relentless in the bottom of the zone,” Red Sox manager John Farrell said.
Yankees outfielder Aaron Hicks actually has pretty good career numbers against Sale — now 6-for16 with a double — and it was Hicks who opened the fourth inning with a clean single just in front of Mookie Betts in right field. A groundball moved Hicks to second, a passed ball let him take third, and a sacrifice fly brought him home.
The passed ball was a cross-up between Sale and catcher Sandy Leon.
“We had a sequence that we were going with, and I just flat out forgot,” Sale said. “I go through them too quick and it was just my mistake.”
Said Farrell: “On a night when two guys are going at it, 90 feet means a lot.”
That passed ball and sacrifice fly were the ballgame until the ninth, when Sale went back to the mound with 103 pitches and gave up singles to the first three batters before Heath Hembree entered and finished the inning.
“You can’t go out there and ask for the ninth inning and want the ninth inning and then go out there and do that,” Sale said. “It’s unacceptable.”
In the end, Sale was left kicking the pitching rubber in frustration, and that was before he stood in the middle of the clubhouse and fell on the sword.
Dustin Pedroia, Betts and Andrew Benintendi each made key plays behind him, but Sale did most of the work himself with 10 strikeouts, including seven of the first 10 batters he faced. Those seven strikeouts were the most he’d ever had through three innings of a start.
Red Sox pitchers have allowed four runs or fewer in each of the past seven games, but the team has just two wins in that stretch. It’s not only Sale who’s feeling the pinch of this underperforming offense, and it’s not only Tanaka who’s shut down these Red Sox hitters.
Baseball’s highest scoring offense of 2016 has become one of the lowest-scoring in 2017. Not to bring up a familiar storyline that’s hounded the Red Sox since the offseason, but it was Bogaerts who mentioned the elephant that’s not in the room.
“What’s been different?” he said. “I mean, David’s not here.”
No, David Ortiz is not here, and there’s no reason to believe he’ll be back.
“We’ve got to do it without him,” Bogaerts said. “We’re trying. We’re trying to put up good at-bats, trying to get guys on base, but having that 34 in the lineup is something that opposing pitchers definitely were afraid of.”