Sweep of the area
Sox finish successful trip with perfect three in KC
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Watch out, Rangers.
The Red Sox closed out a very successful road trip with a not-even-close sweep of the Royals yesterday, a 7-4 pounding that gave the Red Sox consecutive perfect series after disposing of Washington earlier in the week.
With a seven-game homestand starting tonight against the
AL West last-place Texas Rangers, the surging Red Sox have a chance to add even more wins to their best-in-the-majors 6229 record.
“Great road trip (7-2) — to win in Washington and come here and take care of business, it was a great one,” said manager Alex Cora. “We played good defense, we pitched, we swung the bats well. Now we go home, seems like we haven’t been home the whole first half. We have a chance to finish the last week before the All-Star Game strong. We’re in a good place right now as a team.”
The Red Sox’ offense again was the story against the Royals and their paper-thin pitching staff.
Andrew Benintendi (4-for5), who got on base all six times Saturday and his first four times yesterday, led the way for an offense that gave home runs a rest in honor of MLB leader J.D. Martinez getting a day off. The hitters peppered starter Heath Fillmyer and a succession of relievers for 14 hits.
In the three games here, the Red Sox outscored the Royals, 3213, and out-hit them, 45-28.
The Red Sox drew 22 walks in the three games.
In the finale, Benintendi and Mookie Betts each scored twice, while freshly minted All-Star Mitch Moreland, Xander Bogaerts and Eduardo Nunez each drove in two.
“When the pitcher has to worry about runners on base, that takes a little bit of the focus off the hitter, so when you’ve got guys on base a lot, mistakes are bound to happen — that’s when you’ve got to jump on them,” said Benintendi.
Starter Rick Porcello was not at his sharpest but still delivered a high-quality start, holding the Royals to three runs and nine hits in his seven innings with just one walk and nine strikeouts.
He finished stronger than he started, particularly in the seventh inning when he was was protecting a 7-3 lead and immediately faced runners on second and third with no outs.
He ended up retiring the next three batters, the last two on 93-mph fastballs up in the strike zone.
Before Porcello did that, Cora came to the mound, figuring he would relieve him. But Porcello convinced him not to.
“‘I’ve got this, I’ve got this,’” is what Porcello told Cora, who said, “There’s different ‘I got this.’ There’s ‘I got this’ with like, ‘you can take me out.’ There was conviction behind it.
“All the credit goes to him. He changed my mind and he did an outstanding job.”
Said Porcello: “I felt like I could get out of it, felt like I could limit the damage and I felt like it was my mess to clean up. The guys in the bullpen have been getting a lot of work lately and it was my job. Our offense did a great job of putting runs up. That should have been a shutdown inning. I wanted it and he gave it to me.”
Matt Barnes pitched a clean eighth inning.
Tyler Thornburg gave up a run in the ninth, then gave way to closer Craig Kimbrel, who got the final two outs.
Benintendi’s streak of getting on base 10 plate appearances in a row ended with his strikeout in the eighth. Benintendi finished with four walks, three singles, two doubles and a home run during his run.
The Red Sox have yet to be swept themselves this season. The weekend whitewash was their ninth of another team.
They are now 23-6 in series finales and 22-5 in day games.
“Our goal regardless of who we play is to win the series,” said Cora. “I think that’s the simplest way of putting it. … We’ve done an outstanding job throughout the season, so it’s always good to put them away right away to win it. And then it seems like day games or Sundays, the energy is way up. I felt it (yesterday). It was up for a game that’s the last one of the road trip, it’s been a long one. We already had a good one and for them to show up and do what they did, that was cool to see.”