Red Sox Report: No Bobby Ball And Another Schilling Shot
Thursday, April 05, 2012
So much for “Bobby ball!” If you were expecting to see the Boston Red Sox play more small ball under new manager Bobby Valentine, it didn’t happen in game 1 at Detroit.
Both the Red Sox and the Tigers received solid performances from their starting pitchers, neither of whom factored in the decision. In a game decided by the bullpens, Detroit beat Boston 3-2.
The two teams battled through 6 scoreless innings before the Tigers finally got on the board in the bottom of the 7th. Back-to-back doubles off of Jon Lester by Jhonny Peralta and Alex Avila put Detroit up 1-0.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTLester pitched well going 7 innings, allowing 6 hits and 1 run. He walked 3 and struck out 4. But his counterpart for Detroit – Justin Verlander – pitched even better tossing 8 innings of 2-hit shutout baseball for the Tigers.
When Boston handed the game over to its bullpen, things did not go well. Vincente Padilla started the 8th inning and promptly gave up a lead-off triple to Austin Jackson. A few batters later, Franklin Morales relieved Padilla and yielded a sacrifice fly to Prince Fielder giving the Tigers a 2-0 lead.
Detroit’s bullpen also proved shaky as closer Jose Valverde allowed Boston to tie the game in the top of the 9th on a double by Dustin Pedroia, a single by Adrian Gonzalez, a sac fly by David Ortiz and an RBI triple by Ryan Sweeney.
But Boston’s bullpen gave it right back to Detroit in the bottom of the 9th when Mark Melancon started the inning and gave up back-to-back 1-out singles to Ryan Raburn and Jhonny Peralta. That’s when new closer Alfredo Aceves took the mound for Boston. Aceves proceeded to hit the Tigers’ 9th-hitter Ramon Santiago to load the bases. That allowed lead-off man Austin Jackson to come to the plate where his third hit of the day, a walk-off RBI single, drove in the winning run.
Besides the bullpen’s performance, the other disappointing part of the game for Boston occurred in the top of the 2nd when David Ortiz led off the inning with a double off of Verlander. You would think that with t runs hard to come by against Verlander, that Valentine and the Sox would have tried to manufacture a run against Detroit. But, instead of Kevin Youkilis advancing the runner, he hit a grounder to short keeping Ortiz at second base with one out. Ryan Sweeney’s groundout to second advanced Ortiz to third with two out, a groundout that would have scored Ortiz had Youkilis done his job and advanced Big Papi to third. Cody Ross struck out to end the Boston threat.
Youkilis went 0 for 4 in the opener continuing what was a horrible spring for the Boston third baseman. The Red Sox managed only 5 hits for the game with Sweeney picking two of them.
After an off day Friday, Josh Beckett and the Red Sox will take on Doug Fister the Tigers Saturday at 4:05pm in Detroit.
NOTES:
-Jose Valverde’s blown save was his first blown save in his last 52 chances. He completed 49 consecutive save chances a year ago for the Tigers.
-Former Red Sox manager Terry Francona was at Comerica Park as an analyst for ESPN Thursday.
-It was a chilly day in Detroit with the game time temperature listed at 43-degrees. The game was a sell out with 45,027 fans in attendance.
-There were some good signs for Boston in their season-opening loss. The first was the strong performance of Lester who threw 107 pitched and gave up just 1 run against a pretty strong line-up in his 7 innings of work. Another encouraging sign was Boston’s ability to rally late from a 2-0 deficit as they did in the 9th off of dominant closer Jose Valverde. The Boston defense also turned 3 double plays helping Lester get out of some possible jams.
-The biggest disappointment for Boston Thursday was clearly the performance of the bullpen. He consensus coming out of spring training was that this was an area of great concern for the organization and their performance on opening day did nothing to lessen that concern.
-Detroit hitters pounded out 10 hits in their 9 innings of work on Thursday with Jackson and Peralta picking up 3 each.
-ESPN baseball studio analyst and former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling took another shot at Bobby Valentine Thursday via his Twitter account. Here’s Schilling’s tweet: “Michael Kay radio show? Titanic now in open water at full speed!”
Schilling was openly critical of Valentine’s managerial style last week and suggested that it is not going well with many of the players on the team. Valentine, for his part, fired back by saying, “consider the source.”
This feud between the two bares watching.
