The Boston Red Sox Wednesday, May 5, 2021 * The Boston Globe Hunter Renfroe is starting to find a groove, and that helped the Red Sox win series opener vs. Tigers Julian McWilliams Hunter Renfroe believed his swing was there. The approach despite the lackluster numbers (hitting just .191 entering Tuesday night) was there. Good fortune, Renfroe noted, wasn’t. ”I feel like I’ve been hitting the ball hard,” Renfroe said Sunday. “Just haven’t been finding a hole to hit it in. There’s no necessarily big adjustment for me to make right now except for just keeping the ball out of a glove.” On Tuesday, Renfroe finally saw his barrels meet results. In the Sox’ 11-7 win against the Tigers, Renfroe finished a triple shy of the cycle. His 3 for 4 night included two runs scored and two RBIs. In his at-bat in the seventh, Renfroe flied out on a hard-hit ball to right. If it weren’t caught, Renfroe would have had another extra-base hit, and he certainly had a triple on his mind. “I wasn’t going to stop at second, that’s for sure,” Renfroe said. “I was going to get thrown out at third before stopping at second. I was going for it.” In his past three games Renfroe has collected six hits, and seeing the ball drop has given him some sense of reprieve. “Any time you’re a baseball player, you want to see some hits fall,” Renfroe said. “It’s good. Like I said, just stay with my approach and I know it’s going to work out. I know, some balls are going to fall eventually. So now I can go there and work hard and keep hitting.” Renfroe’s homer was his 100th of his career. Alex Verdugo, Xander Bogaerts, and Kiké Hernández each homered, too, and the Red Sox collected 14 hits. “We needed all that,” manager Alex Cora said. “We put together some good swings. We were relentless. We put the ball in play early. And that’s what we’re trying to do with the big part of the field. So when you do that, big things are going to happen.” Yet what looked like a convincing win against the worst team in baseball suddenly turned into a late-night nailbiter for the Red Sox Their underwhelming pitching, spearheaded by the team’s bullpen, forced Cora to go to Matt Barnes in a 10-7 game with just one out and the bases loaded in the eighth inning. Barnes induced a double play to preserve the lead. “We had to go win the game,” Cora said. “You know, our offense did an outstanding job. You have to go to the best in that situation.” Hernández’s homer in the bottom half of the eighth added an insurance run, followed by Barnes’ clean 1-2- 3 ninth. Christian Vázquez had three hits with two RBIs. The Red Sox (18-12) put up four runs in the first inning beginning with a J.D. Martinez force out that scored Hernández. With runners on the corners, Martinez hit a potential double play grounder to third base but beat it out just in time to score Hernández. The Red Sox plated three more runs that inning off Tigers starter Michael Fulmer on RBI singles by Vázquez, Marwin Gonzalez, and Renfroe. It ultimately forced Tigers manager A.J. Hinch to go to his bullpen with just two outs in the first frame. By the end of three innings, the Sox had seen four different Tiger pitchers. The first inning set the table for what ended up being a game charged by offense. Verdugo and Bogaerts left the yard in the following frame. Then Renfroe homered in the fifth to make it 9-3, his third hit of the evening. Despite the offensive display, the Sox’ pitching had its struggles, too. Nick Pivetta gave the Sox five innings, yielding three runs on six hits and two walks while striking out eight. “Nick was OK today. I mean, he battled with control,” Cora said. “They put some on bats, and it feels like he wasn’t as aggressive in the strike zone. But when Austin Brice took over in the sixth inning, that lead quickly diminished, turning what appeared to be a blowout into an actual contest. Detroit’s Niko Goodrum led off the sixth with a single. After a flyout, Brice plunked Willi Castro. The next batter, JaCoby Jones, belted a three-run shot to left to make it 9-6 before a double by Victor Reyes ended Brice’s evening. Cora called on Matt Andriese from the bullpen, and he allowed an RBI single by Detroit’s Robbie Grossman that shrunk the Sox lead to 9-7. But Andriese recorded back-to-back strikeouts to end the threat, including a called third strike on Miguel Cabrera to finish a 10-pitch at-bat. In the end, the Sox’ bats saved the club. “The thump that this lineup has is from one to nine is pretty incredible,” Renfroe said. Chris Sale throws off mound for first time, more than 13 months after Tommy John surgery Alex Speier and Julian McWilliams Red Sox lefthander Chris Sale arrived at a key checkpoint in his recovery from Tommy John surgery Tuesday. At the end of his throwing session in Fort Myers, Sale — for the first time since a live batting practice session on March 1, 2020 — started throwing off a mound. “It was not an extensive throwing session, but at the end of the session this morning, he got up off the mound and threw a few pitches off the mound,” chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said. ”That is a great milestone for him. It’s the first time he’s done that since the surgery. Very light today, but great for Chris, and awesome for the organization.” That mound session, more than 13 months after Sale’s Tommy John surgery, came later than anticipated. But Sale’s progression had been slowed since the start of this year by a neck injury and then a COVID-19 infection. Bloom revealed Tuesday that Sale also endured a minor back issue early in spring training that further slowed his progress. Bloom described the neck and back issues as “things that, if he were healthy and getting ready for a season, wouldn’t be that big of a deal. They’d be very small disruptions. But when you’re looking at getting a throwing program going and proceeding methodically through a Tommy John rehab, they obviously set you back.” Even so, Sale is now moving beyond those setbacks and moving toward more regular work on the mound. That work does not come with a clear date for Sale’s return to a big league mound, but does get the team closer to the point where it will be able to envision him as a member of the rotation. “We’re getting closer to a point where we can start mapping out a timetable. I don’t have one, but he is progressing,” Bloom said. “The next step is to get into regular mound work, mound work with some intensity. Then we can start thinking about facing hitters and mapping out a game schedule. I don’t know exactly when that’ll be. Whenever it is, it is. We have to do it right. The important thing is we’re moving forward.” Reunion in opposite dugouts A quiet storyline heading into the three-game series against Detroit, beginning Tuesday night at Fenway Park, was manager Alex Cora vs. Tigers manager A.J. Hinch. Both were suspended last season because of their involvement in the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal back in 2017 when Hinch was the manager and Cora was his bench coach. Both are now back in baseball even though some fans and critics don’t agree with either of them getting a second chance. “I’m happy that he’s back doing what he does,” Cora said before first pitch. “There’s a lot of people who are happy that I’m managing. There’s others that don’t agree. But at the end, both of us are back in baseball doing what we love and we have a job to do which is to take our team to the next level. The two are in opposite situations. Hinch’s Tigers team came into this game as the worst team in baseball (8-21), having lost 13 of their last 15 contests. Cora and the Red Sox, meanwhile, team still sit atop of the AL East at 17-12. “Obviously, it’s a different situation than us,” Cora said regarding the Hinch and the Tigers’ predicament. “But he’s going to be OK.” Hinch and Cora have heard their share of boos from fans on the road this year. Cora heard some of the fans’ disdain during the Sox’ road series vs. the Rangers this past weekend. “They booed me,” Cora said. “And that’s their right, so I understand that. And it doesn’t change where I’m at, and how I think about the whole thing. I’ve been very open about it. People have the right to think the way they want to think about me and I understand that part.” COVID-19 update COVID-19 restrictions have loosened for some teams whose Tier 1 personnel (players, coaches and support staff) have reached the 85 percent vaccination threshold implemented by Major League Baseball. MLB announced last week that four teams reached that mark, including the Tigers.