Bullpen struggles as Red Sox fall
By Bill Ballou TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
Jul 7, 2012 at 12:01 AM Jul 7, 2012 at 12:04 PM
Either manager Bobby Valentine knows Red Sox history, or he has good instincts. Or perhaps both, because he knew exactly what to say yesterday when asked about the State of the Team as the All-Star break approached.
"I'm not happy about it at all," the manager said. "There have been a lot of games we've let slip away. I wish we were better."
Contrast that to what John McNamara said when Boston hit the All-Star break way back in 1988 with a 43-42 record. That particular manager said that, all things considered, he thought 43-42 was pretty good.
McNamara was fired four days later.
Last night's 10-8 loss to the Yankees was another of Boston's slip-away games. The Sox trailed early, 5-0, then came back to take a 6-5 lead before the bullpen blew it by surrendering four runs in the seventh. The defeat left Boston with a 42-41 record with three games to go before the break.
When McNamara uttered the words that eventually doomed him, he was talking about a team that had battled through injuries, disappointments and inconsistencies. That sounds a lot like what has happened in 2012.
Last night, for goodness sake, the Red Sox had to take on the Yanks with Mauro Gomez at third base and Nick Punto at second.
No manager should have to play a game with Punto in the starting lineup, unless he's a Triple-A manager. Punto came up four times last night and had one hit. He was the last out of the inning the other three times, stranding four runners on base.
Boston is 0-3 versus New York this season and has to play the Yankees 15 more times. The Red Sox are winless even though they are hitting .353 against New York pitching and have averaged 6.3 runs a game. Problem is, the Yankees have scored 31 runs in the three games and have scored 17 runs in 10 innings against the Boston bullpen.
That's a nifty 15.30 ERA for Sox relievers.
Last night, both teams had 14 hits. Boston batters had the game's only home runs with Jarrod Saltalamacchia hitting a three-run blast in the first and Cody Ross a solo shot in the seventh. Starter Josh Beckett gave up six runs in five innings, but left with the lead.
The bullpen surrendered four runs in the seventh with Mark Teixeira's triple into the triangle off Vicente Padilla being the key hit. How delightful that must have made Teixeira feel, since he and Padilla are long-time adversaries stemming from Padilla's history of hit batsmen.
"I knew (Teixeira) was 2 for 10 against him with a couple of home runs," Valentine said, "but that wasn't this year, the way he's been throwing. I had to go one out sooner than I wanted to to Padilla, but he's gotten him out a lot more than (Teixeira's) gotten hits off him."
Still, the Sox needed more than they got from Beckett, especially since they scored six runs for him. He gave up five in the first, then his teammates responded with five in the bottom of the inning off Yankees starter Hiroki Kuroda.
Saltalamacchia's homer into the right-field corner made it a 5-5 game.
"In the first inning, the strike zone was very hard for him to find," Valentine said of Beckett. "It really kind of put us climbing uphill the whole game."
The top of the Yankees' order had 10 hits with Alex Rodriguez leading the way with three. New York had two doubles and two triples and was 4 for 10 with men in scoring position as opposed to Boston's 4 for 13.
David Ortiz and Alex Gonzalez both had three hits for the Red Sox, and Gonzalez was up with men at first and second and two outs in the last of the eighth. Pinch-runner Brent Lillibridge was the potential tying run, but Gonzalez bounced a routine grounder to first to end the inning.
"I thought we were gonna at least tie it up," Valentine said. "That's why I had the pinch runner at first — to score on the double (Gonzalez) was gonna hit."
The bottom of the ninth brought up the bottom of the Sox batting order and by then, their chances of coming back one more time had bottomed out.