sox drop third straight
Godley one bright spot in ugly loss
Opening Day was a long, long time ago.
At least it feels like it after another ugly night at Fenway Park on Monday, when the Sox got their lunch handed to them by the New York Mets in a 7-4 loss.
The Sox fall to 1-3 on the season and have been out-scored 21-10 since their Opening Day win. All three losses have been non-competitive.
Here are the three takeaways from Monday’s loss:
1. Do the Red Sox have a plan with their pitchers?
It’s not Ron Roenicke’s fault he’s got a mangled pitching staff due to injuries, illnesses and a lack of spending power in the front office. But the new skipper isn’t off to a great start with the pitchers he does have access to.
Behind Nathan Eovaldi in the No. 1 spot, Martin Perez and Ryan Weber were rocked in their first two starts. Josh Osich, making his first outing as an opener on Monday, kept the train going in the wrong direction.
Osich, a lefty, gave up two runs in two innings on 28 pitches before Roenicke made the most questionable decision of the day. Jeffrey Springs, the lefty acquired from the Rangers for Sam Travis, took over to face the top of the Mets’ order that included the left-handed hitting Brandon Nimmo and then two righties, Amed Rosario and Pete Alonso, the slugger who hit 53 homers in his record-setting rookie year in 2019.
With MLB’s new three-batter minimum, Springs had the platoon advantage against Nimmo but was left on the wrong side of it against Rosario and Alonso. Rosario singled, then Alonso absolutely blasted one over the Green Monster for a two-run homer, his first of the year. The pitch was a hanging changeup right down the pipe.
Down 4-0 but not out of it yet, Roenicke left Springs in the game.
Wilson Ramos, a righty, doubled to lead off the fourth, Robinson Cano walked and then Dominic Smith, a lefty, roped a three-run shot that finally knocked Springs out of the game.
If the Red Sox are going to use the opener in their fourth and fifth spots in their rotation, they have to have a better plan than running out back-to-back lefties who originally entered the spring as depth pitchers not expected to make much of an impact this year.
The painful part, though, was what came next.
2. Zack Godley looked dominant. Again.
Godley was a bright spot in the Sox’ pair of exhibition games against the Blue Jays last week. He looked sharp with a cutter/curve mix and figured to be a nice part of the Sox’ beat-up pitching staff.
But he was optioned to start the season, a move that Roenicke explained as a procedural one to let Godley rest for a couple days before he’d be activated, which is exactly what happened.
The curious move is why Godley wasn’t the starter in Monday’s game, or at least the second pitcher used after Osich.
Godley once again brought a great cutter/curve combination that had the Mets totally fooled. They swung and missed 15 times in 53 pitches, a stunning rate, and Godley finished four scoreless innings with seven strikeouts, most by a Red Sox pitcher this year.
Michael Conforto, Alonso and Smith — the three batters who homered in this one — were all stymied by Godley, who struck each of them out.
Godley, who has struck out nearly a batter per inning over his big league career, almost certainly will have an expanded role after this performance, but in a 60-game season, when every game essentially counts as three, the Sox missed a chance to capitalize on his sharpness on Monday night.
3. Rafael Devers is struggling on defense.
It’s not a perfect time to be playing baseball, coming out of a fourmonth-long break with three weeks of “spring training” to get ready before starting games in July, in the middle of a pandemic. That’s where the excuses end. Devers simply looks unprepared. Everything looks off and unsettled on defense. His timing is all wrong and his throws have been all over the place, sometimes high and off the mark, other times low and in the dirt.
Another throw was botched on Monday and he’s already made a handful of poor plays in the first four games.
On the bright side, he doubled in the eighth inning for his second hit of the season.