Lowly A’s take game, series
Given another chance to pad their record against an unfortunate team, the Red Sox dropped the series finale in Oakland, falling 6-5 to the A’s on Wednesday afternoon.
The game yielded several career milestones for Red Sox players. Yu Chang’s 221st career Major League game set a record for games by a player born in Taiwan and Kiké Hernández became the 50th Puerto Ricoborn player to reach 1,000 career MLB games. In the eighth inning, Kenley Jansen made his 800th career appearance, the 54th pitcher all-time and only active arm to do so.
Otherwise, little else went well for the Red Sox, though the contest began in promising fashion. After his team got shut out on Tuesday night, Justin Turner roared back with a vengeance in the first inning, walloping a two-run homer for an immediate lead. Doing so extended his hitting streak to 15 games, moving him into sole possession of the longest streak ever by a Red Sox player aged 38 or older.
But the usually-dominant Brayan Bello looked out of sorts in his 16th start, and the 2-0 lead evaporated almost immediately. After not allowing a home run in six starts (37 2/3 innings) between May 30 and June 29, he’s struggled to keep the ball in the yard in July.
That issue not only continued, but escalated on Wednesday. The 24-yearold right-hander began the bottom of the first by allowing a single to Tony Kemp and game-tying homer to JJ Bleday. In the following frame, Bello issued a oneout walk to Jace Peterson, and Cody Thomas’ first career Major League home run gave the A’s a 4-2 lead.
In the fourth inning, Bello did something he’d never done before in his Major League career: he gave up a third home run.
Bello didn’t return for the fifth inning, snapping a streak of seven consecutive starts of six or more innings.
“Just a bad outing. It happens,” Alex Cora told reporters postgame. “He’s not going to be perfect. Usually they don’t hit the ball out of the ballpark, they did… Control wasn’t great. The changeup wasn’t good early on. And obviously, they did a good job offensively.”
“They” were the A’s lefty batters, who walloped the three home runs. Lefthanded hitters are averaging .276 against Bello, a stark contrast to righties’ .220 average.
“We’re just developing a new pitch to go up against the left-handers,” Bello told NESN via translator Daveson Pérez. “I need that pitch to be able to set up some of my other pitches. So, yeah, just a work in progress.”
“It’s a pitch that, obviously, he wants to use up in the zone to get chases,” Cora said of his starter’s cutter. “He keeps working on it because he needs it.”
That Bleday homered on the first pitch he saw wasn’t exactly a surprise; hitters have feasted on those all season, hitting .439 with a 1.185 OPS, 18 hits, five doubles, a triple, and two home runs off Bello’s first pitches entering Wednesday. More perplexing was that the second and third homers were each hit with two strikes; the young starter came into the game holding opposing batters to a minuscule .164 average and .451 OPS when he had two strikes against them.
“I just suffered the consequences,” the young starter said.
Even the best pitchers have the occasional bad outing, but the troubling pattern emerging this season is that Bello consistently struggles in day games. He owns a 7.25 ERA over five such contests (22 1/3 innings), compared to a 2.39 ERA in 11 night starts (67 2/3 IP). Opposing lineups are hitting .319 and averaging 4.5 runs against him during the day, up from a meager 1.8 runs and .223 average at night.
“There is a difference between the day games and the night games,” Bello admitted. “Less time to prepare, but that’s not an excuse. At the end of the day, I gotta go out there and do my thing, and today, it just didn’t work out for me.”
As in the previous night’s game, the A’s did the entirety of their scoring against the starting pitcher, then went scoreless for the remainder of the game. Joely Rodríguez, Josh Winckowski, and Jansen combined for four scoreless innings, giving their teammates ample time to bridge the gap.
But as has been the case too often this season, the Boston bats squandered opportunities. They added a pair of runs in the top of the fifth and another in the top of the sixth, but not without some inadvertent help; A’s pitchers Ken Waldichuk and and Lucas Erceg each made a throwing error in those innings. By game’s end, the visitors had gone 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position, leaving five men on base.
“We fought and clawed,” Turner told NESN.
Opening the second half of the season with a road trip against two teams with abysmal records, the Red Sox went 3-3. It’s reminiscent of their late-June travels, when they spent a week visiting the Twins and White Sox. Then, too, the Red Sox failed to capitalize on series against less-thanstellar teams, going 2-2 in Minnesota and 1-2 in Chicago.
“Not great, to be honest with you,” Cora said frankly.
The Red Sox have the day off on Thursday before hosting the New York Mets for three games, but once again, they return home with their tails between their legs, instead of flush with momentum.
If this team wants their front office to buy at the deadline, rather than taking a wrecking ball to the roster, they’re sending the wrong message.