Starting to be a problem
Bad first runs skid to five
NEW YORK — Not today. The message Arya Stark delivered to the prospect of death applied equally well — once again — to the Red Sox’ desire to spark new life to their season-in-decline.
Before the Red Sox lost 4-2 to the dreaded Yankees, manager Alex Cora said, “We have to play better — it starts here you know, this is where it starts.”
It did not start Friday in the Bronx, where the Red Sox lost their fifth game in a row, mustering just three hits on the night and were retired in order five separate times.
Eduardo Rodriguez’ inability to revere and protect the first-inning 2-0 lead bestowed upon him — he allowed a grand slam to Gleyber Torres in the bottom of the first inning — was all it took for the Red Sox to stay far behind the Yankees in the AL East and drop further behind the three teams ahead of them in the AL wild card race.
“We didn’t play well against Tampa, we didn’t play well against the Yankees on Sunday — today was a good baseball game,” Cora said. “Just one of those, the way it looked in the first inning, I thought it was going to be 13-12, but both pitchers did an outstanding job and that big swing put us in a good spot.”
Each starter, Rodriguez and the Yankees’ James Paxton, began on a shaky note before settling into a nearly unhittable groove.
Paxton struck out the first two batters of the game before issuing a walk to Xander Bogaerts.
That brought up J.D. Martinez, who homered off Paxton in the Yankees left-hander’s awful start at Fenway last week. Martinez did it again here, golfing a ball over the left field wall for the 2-0 Red Sox lead.
Rodriguez gained no such two-out edge to begin his night. He put the first three batters he faced on base, via a single and then two walks.
One out later, Gleyber Torres launched a grand slam to left that ignited the crowd and put the Yankees up, 4-2.
After that, both Paxton and Rodriguez spent the next few innings not messing around.
Including the final out of the first inning, Paxton retired eight Red Sox in a row — he struck out the side in the second — before issuing a walk and allowing a single in the fourth. He stranded both base-runners.
Over his final two innings, Paxton allowed only a walk. He finished his six innings with the two runs allowed, just two hits, six strikeouts and three walks.
In that July 26 start at Fenway, Paxton went just four innings and allowed seven runs on nine hits, four of them home runs.
Rodriguez still struggled with his control over the rest of his start — he issued at least one walk in five of his first six innings — but when he threw the ball over the plate, Yankees hitters were flummoxed.
The eight walks issued by Rodriguez were a seasonhigh for a Red Sox starter, and Rodriguez now is 0-3 with a 5.29 ERA over his last six starts at Yankee Stadium.
“I know these guys score runs every time I go out there. It was my part today to go out there and throw seven, six inning with no runs,” Rodriguez said. “I failed in that part.”
He struck out four in a row in the fifth and the beginning of the sixth. After that rocky first inning, Rodriguez allowed just one hit, an infield single, over his next five innings.
Rodriguez retired the first two batters in the seventh before DJ LeMahieu’s scorching double ended his night. Reliever Marcus Walden did his job, striking out Aaron Judge.
In his 6 ⅔ innings, Rodriguez allowed the four runs on five hits, striking out eight while walking a whopping six Yankees.
“His stuff was really good,” Cora said of Rodriguez. “His command for the first three hitters, it was off. And too bad, because he actually pitched a pretty good game.”
Not good enough on this day.