David Price pitched well, but so did all of the Giants pitchers.
Top Play (WPA)
Just like the last game, there’s little doubt as to what play goes here, and that’s Mac Williamson’s go-ahead homer in the 8th inning.
Price had pitched very well outside of a Brandon Belt homer, but he didn’t bury a cutter down enough to Williamson to keep him from knocking it over the left field wall for a .292 WPA. That was Williamson’s first career homer in the bigs, and it came at a very opportune time for the Giants. Wall-scraper or not, a homer’s a homer, and the Red Sox couldn’t muster more than one run to tie it, even after Madison Bumgarner exited the game.
Bottom Play (WPA)
We have a tie in futility! In the 9th inning, both Jackie Bradley Jr. and Travis Shaw struck out with Hanley Ramirez on second base, and they both were worth a -.132 WPA. JBJ’s strikeout was a little bit more forgivable here, as he was wronged by some questionable calls, but Shaw continued his downward spiral by looking completely lost at the plate again. Calling Shaw’s last couple weeks “rough” might be understating it a bit – he’s 11 for 54 with a 26.3% strikeout rate over the last 14 days.
Key Moment
Everything after Hanley Ramirez’s “double”. The Sox were given a gift when Mac Williamson dropped a long fly ball from Ramirez, but were utterly ineffective when it came to driving him in. Jackie Bradley struck out, Ortiz walked, Shaw struck out, and Marco Hernandez grounded out on the first pitch of the at-bat. It was an incredibly frustrating sequence to watch.
In lighter news, SIXTY-NINE SPLASH HITS.
Trend to Watch
Chris Young being really, really good at everything. He’s hitting .296/.374/.580 for the season, but over the last two weeks, that triple slash skyrockets to .385/.467/.885 with . That’s a .500 ISO. He’s gotten hits off both right-handed and left-handed pitchers over that span, but this game gave us his first home run against a southpaw, and that southpaw turned out to be Madison Bumgarner. So yeah, Young is molten lava hot.
Coming Next
Nothing on Thursday, but the Red Sox will resume baseball activities on Friday, as they’ll travel to Minnesota to take on the Twins. Steven Wright will face off against Kyle Gibson in the first game of the series.
Photo by Kelley L. Cox/USA Today Sports Images