Martinez, Bogaerts hit big in KC for Sox
Red Sox 7 Royals 4
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As a courtesy to someone he greatly respects, Red Sox manager Alex Cora contacted J.D. Martinez on Friday morning to tell him he was being dropped to sixth in the lineup.
Batting sixth would be just fine for most players, but Martinez hadn’t been that low since May 2017 when he was with the Detroit Tigers. He has batted third or fourth since.
Martinez offered no protest. He knows better than anyone how poorly he has hit in recent weeks.
Cora got the result he wanted. Martinez came up with runners on base in the fourth inning and lined a two-run double to left field that helped push the Sox to a 7-4 victory against the Kansas City Royals.
Martinez was 3 for 34 since the All-Star break with two RBI, and had a .214 average since June 1 with a scrubby .633 OPS. He’s on pace to hit 13 home runs, which would be his fewest in a full season since 2013. There’s still time to boost those numbers, something that would benefit Martinez as he approaches free agency after the season.
Xander Bogaerts had four hits and scored two runs for the Sox. Alex Verdugo was 3 for 4.
This was not baseball at its finest. Ten pitchers allowed 22 hits and there were 20 men left on base over 3 hours and 44 minutes.
Rookie righthander Josh Winckowski pitched well for the Sox, holding the Royals to one run over five innings. He took a 4-0 lead into the fifth inning before Salvador Perez hit a long home run to left field.
Kansas City left six runners on base against Winckowski and was hitless in four at-bats with runners in scoring position.
Winckowski’s best work came in the fourth as he loaded the bases with one out and worked his way out of the jam.
Kyle Isbel tapped a ball back to the mound that Winckowski calmly shoveled to the plate for a force. He then struck out Nick Lopez swinging at a slider after falling behind 3-and-1.
Winckowski (5-5) dropped his earned run average to 4.68. He has worked at least five innings with two or fewer earned runs in six of his 10 starts.
Kansas City starter Zack Greinke retired the first four batters he faced on 10 pitches and looked sharp, but his 223rd career regular-season win will have to come another time. The 38-year-old righthander allowed four runs on seven hits over 4„ innings.
Doubles by Verdugo and Eric Hosmer gave the Sox a 1-0 lead in the second. Hosmer, a former Royals star playing in Kansas City for the first time since 2017, was cheered when he came to the plate and even cheered when he doubled to right field for his first hit and RBI with the Sox.
Johnny Damon coming back to Fenway Park with the Yankees this most assuredly was not.
Martinez’s double came after Bogaerts singled and Verdugo doubled. Martinez belted a hanging curve to left field that looked for a moment that it could be caught, but MJ Melendez could not make a play at the wall.
Greinke walked Tommy Pham and Devers with two outs in the fifth. Bogaerts followed with a single to left that knocked Greinke (3-7) out of the game.
He has a 5.33 ERA in 10 regular-season appearances against the Sox.
The Sox went ahead, 5-1, in the sixth inning when Hosmer reached second on an error by Melendez and Reese McGuire’s single drove him in. It was his first RBI with the Sox since being acquired from the White Sox earlier this week.
Jarren Duran added a tworun double in the eighth, and the runs provided some comfort when Kansas City scored three in their half, Austin Davis allowing a single, two walks, and a Nate Eaton sacrifice fly to make it 7-2.
Cora turned to John Schreiber, who gave up a pair of hits, the latter a two-run, twoout double by Melendez to make it 7-4. But Schreiber got Michael Massey to fly out as the potential tying run, then put Kansas City down on 10 pitches in the ninth.