Sox don’t waste Wacha
Martinez RBI single caps two-run rally in eighth to beat KC
As he came up to bat in a tied game with the bases loaded in the eighth inning on Friday night, J.D. Martinez knew what his approach was.
“Don’t swing,” he said. It made sense. Royals pitcher Scott Barlow had just issued a four-pitch walk to Rafael Devers, then struck out Xander Bogaerts with three pitches outside the strike zone before issuing another four-pitch free pass to Alex Verdugo, who walked in the tying run.
But when Barlow threw Martinez a first-pitch slider in the zone, the Red Sox designated hitter’s plan changed.
“I was like, ‘Alright, we’re swinging,’ ” Martinez said.
The result: A sharp grounder that made its way into left field for the goahead and ultimately gamewinning RBI single. The hit was just the Red Sox’ third of the night. But on a night in which they drew eight walks, it was the longawaited breakthrough they needed and the difference in a 2-1 win over the Royals at Fenway Park.
Michael Wacha delivered another gem, throwing seven innings and allowing one run. But for most of the night, it looked like it wasn’t going to be enough. The Red Sox looked lost against Royals starter Jonathan Heasley — who entered the night with a 5.51 ERA — as they collected just two hits against the right-hander.
They even squandered a bases loaded, one-out opportunity in the fifth — a microcosm of their season-long struggles offensively — after Kiké Hernández grounded into an inning-ending double play and slammed his helmet in frustration in the process. It looked like that would come back to haunt them.
But given another chance, they took advantage as their patience was finally rewarded.
Hernández and pinchhitter Abraham Almonte drew walks against Dylan Coleman to start the eighth to start the rally before the Royals switched to Barlow, who has good stuff but couldn’t find the zone. Devers and Verdugo drew the third and fourth walks of the inning before Martinez’s heroics.
The eight walks by the Red Sox marked their second most in a game this season, behind the 11 they drew on June 26 at Cleveland. That kind of patience has been rare this season for a team that’s too often been caught expanding and swinging at pitches out of the zone.
“A walk is a hit,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “That’s what they used to tell us in Little League. We did a good job today. There were a lot of 3-2s, a lot of four-pitch walks. We won a lot of counts that mattered. That’s the fun part of it. When you do that as an offense, regardless if you see the two hits, one hit, whatever, you feel like something good is going to happen. Tonight we did.”
As rare as that team-wide patience has been, Martinez’s eighth-inning breakthrough was a stark reminder of the Red Sox’ season-long issues of driving in runs with runners in scoring position, and specifically from their heavy hitters in Martinez and Devers.
Martinez has driven in at least 99 runs in his first three full seasons — 2018, 2019 and 2021 — with the Red Sox. But his game-winning hit on Friday gave him just his 53rd RBI of the season with 18 games left.
“We had a lot of baserunners throughout the season and the batting average is not what we’re used to be with men in scoring position and obviously there’s more stuff offensively that we haven’t done throughout the season, but they’re run producers,” Cora said of Martinez and Devers. “They drive in runs. That’s how people get paid, right? We hit them in the middle of the lineup and it’s been a struggle for them in those situations.
“It’s good to see the big guy get a hit there. It’s good to see Raffy take a walk in that situation. It picked everybody up.”
Matt Strahm recorded his fourth save of the season with a shutout ninth after Wacha once again gave the Red Sox every chance to win. His only real blemish came in the sixth, when he allowed a leadoff triple to MJ Melendez before Salvador Perez gave the Royals a 1-0 lead with an RBI single through a drawn-in infield.
Wacha has pitched at least six innings in six of his seven starts since coming off the injured list and the Red Sox improved to 15-5 in his 20 starts this season.
That allowed the offense to — finally — find a way in the eighth. A way they haven’t consistently found all season.
“A lot of 3-2 counts, a lot of 3-1 counts, we walked. We don’t do that often,” Cora said. “At the end of the day, it’s baserunners, right? We loaded the bases a few times and we did a good job controlling the zone and we cashed in at the end.”