• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

The Boston Red Sox Thursday, June 28, 2018 * The Boston Globe The Red Sox blew a 6-run lead, but bounced right back Julian Benbow Since the first time the teams met back in April, the Red Sox have essentially been putting on a batting practice display against Angels pitching. Coming into Wednesday’s night matchup at Fenway Park, the Sox had hit at least one homer off nine different Angels. One of the few arms on the Angels’ staff that hadn’t been taken deep by the Sox was lefthander Andrew Heaney. It didn’t take long for them to add him to the list. But after piling up another gaudy lead with six runs and three homers in the second inning, the Sox had to scramble to come away with a 9-6 win. Homers from Eduardo Nunez, Sandy Leon, and J.D. Martinez staked Sox starter Rick Porcello to a 6-0 lead, but the righthander gave up four runs on eight hits (two homers) in 5⅔ innings, and Joe Kelly coughed up the lead in the seventh when he gave up two more, including an unearned run on his own throwing error to second. But Rafael Devers delivered an RBI double in the seventh on a line drive to deep center field, and Leon added some insurance with a run-scoring single as the Sox picked up their third straight win. “Obviously, when you get up, 6-0, like that right away, it’s a challenge at that point not to go into auto- pilot,” Martinez said. “You want to continue to push the gas, keep pressing and keep attacking because they have a really good offense over there and just like that they came back in the game. “But I think this is a team where there’s not really much panic. Everyone’s like, ‘All right, let’s go, we’ve got to get it back.’ ” The Sox have won all five meetings against the Angels this season. The trio of homers gave the Sox 116 for the season. Eighteen of those have come against the Angels, which is the most by any team in baseball history in a season series of six games or fewer. “There’s really no one explanation for it,” Martinez said. “Maybe we just match up well against them, our game plans are good, I don’t know. I believe, personally, hitting’s contagious. So starting right away, boom-boom hit, hit, it just domino effects.” The Sox did most of their damage with a six-run second inning. Nunez got them on the board with a homer to lead things off. He shipped an 0-and-1 sinker from Heaney into straightaway center field for his fifth homer of the season. Two batters later, after Devers had flipped a single into center, Leon blasted a 3-and-1 sinker off the AAA sign over the Green Monster for a two-run homer that stretched the lead to 3-0. Leon upped his home run total for the season to three. Martinez made it three in the inning when he swatted a first-pitch changeup into the front row of the Monster seats for a three-run homer. The blast pushed Martinez’s major league-leading home run total to 25, making him the first player in Red Sox history to hit 25 homers before the end of June. “He’s a special player,” said Sox manager Alex Cora. “He’s a special hitter. And he’s becoming a special teammate. “What he brings to the table is more than what he does on the field. He’s becoming the leader of the team in the clubhouse, and we’re very proud of him.” Martinez has homered in 13 of 14 series at Fenway. Porcello ran into trouble late in his outing. In the fifth inning. Ian Kinsler jumped on a first-pitch two- seamer and lifted it over the Monster for a solo homer, his 11th of the year, to make it 6-1. An inning later, with two on and one out, Martin Maldonado swatted a 1-and-2 two-seamer into the Monster seats for a three-run homer that cut the Sox’ lead to 6-4. It was just the second time this season that Porcello allowed multiple home runs in a start. “It was a weird game, slow pace,” Cora said of the 4-hour-1-minute contest. “I know he’s not going to use that as an excuse, but it felt weird the whole time. He did a good job. We scored some runs but then we didn’t finish them. I’m glad we won the game. It wasn’t the prettiest game to watch, but hey, we’ll take it.” The Angels kept clawing back in the seventh. With Kelly on the mound, Justin Upton and Albert Pujols came up with one-out singles. Kelly appeared to wiggle out of the jam when he got Luis Valbuena to bounce back to the mound. But instead of starting an inning-ending double play, Kelly’s throw to second sailed past shortstop Xander Bogaerts and into center field, allowing Upton to score and Pujols to move to second. The next batter, Andrelton Simmons, sent a ground ball down the third base line for an RBI double that scored Pujols and knotted the game at 6. Devers and Leon restored order in the eighth with their run-scoring hits. Craig Kimbrel relieved Kelly and was able to get out of the inning without any further damage, then Devers and Leon restored order in the eighth. The Sox got another run in the bottom of the eighth on a wild pitch by Jake Jewell, but the play at the plate resulted in a gruesome right ankle injury. Martinez raced home as catcher Maldonado tried to retrieve the ball. Jewell tried to slide into the plate to meet Martinez as Maldonado made the throw home, but his right ankle got caught underneath him. Jewell lay motionless on his back as medical staff tended to him. Ultimately, he had to be carted off the field. “I just kept saying, ‘I didn’t touch him,’ ” Martinez said. “I didn’t feel any impact or anything like that. I mean, those are kind of the scariest ones almost. He looked like he was in a lot of pain. Obviously, prayers to him and you feel bad. You don’t want to see that happen.” Kimbrel finished out the ninth with a 1-2-3 inning to pick up his first four-out save of the season. The Sox are 33-5 when they hit multiple homers. For the fourth time in franchise history, the Sox have won 54 games (and are a half-game ahead of the Yankees in the AL East) at the halfway point. “It’s been great,” Cora said. “It’s a great start. It’s not early anymore. We’re proud of the way the guys are playing. We feel that we can be a lot better . That’s a good team over there. “We did a good job winning this series. We have a chance to start off the second half tomorrow sweeping them.” “But all around, I’m very proud of them. They’re doing an outstanding job. They’re showing up every day. They prepare. We’ve been talking about talking baseball for a while, and they’re doing that. My hat’s off to them. They’ve been amazing.” J.D. Martinez is a game-changer, in more ways than one Peter Abraham You can’t blame the fan in the first row of the Monster Seats who missed catching the home run J.D. Martinez hit in the second inning on Wednesday night. According to all-knowing Statcast, the ball was travelling at 108 miles per hour off Martinez’s bat. No souvenir is worth getting in the way of that without a glove. This ball sure would have been a keeper, though. It was Martinez’s 25th home run, the most for any Red Sox player in history before the end of June. It also helped the 54-27 Sox move back into first place at the midway point of the season with a 9-6 victory against the Los Angeles Angels. Little bits of trivia are fun. But the real significance of Martinez’s home run was that it was one more than any Red Sox player hit all of last season. The addition of Martinez has given the Sox a hitter who can change the game with one swing. The Sox had to scratch for runs last season and every hitter felt pressure to produce, more and more as the season went on. David Ortiz’s retirement left a hole nobody could fill. Blasphemous as it sounds, Martinez has filled it. He’s not the same kind of personality as Ortiz — nobody could be — but his presence in the lineup has made it easier for everybody around him. It sounded almost too simple last winter: fill the power void by signing a player who hit 45 home runs. But it was that simple. That Dave Dombrowski waited as long as he did to sign Martinez was a testament to his patience and understanding he could get a better deal in what was a weak market for free agents. Any concern about Martinez’s opposite-field righthanded swing not being a fit at Fenway Park proved groundless. Of Martinez’s 17 home runs at home, six have come to right field or right-center.

Load more

  49

Copy Link