Where should we start? The Red Sox and Giants finished up their two-game series in style on Wednesday night, playing a good old fashioned, anxiety-inducing slugfest.
Top Play (WPA)
Even without getting into specifics, it’d be easy to guess that Wednesday’s top play belonged to Hanley Ramirez in some form or another. Top play honors, however, go to Ramirez’s third home run of the night, a line drive that just stayed fair and just snuck over the green monster (.162). For the more poetic souls out there, his home run came off reliever Albert Suarez, who hit Ramirez in the elbow with a pitch two innings prior. (Hanley even maybe might have guaranteed the home run?)
Bottom Play (WPA)
Poor Gregor Blanco. Up with the bases loaded and no one out, Blanco grounded into a 3-2 double play, with the throw home from Ramirez just beating Brandon Belt’s slide (-.243). On a night when Hanley hit three home runs, this play might have garnered the loudest cheer from the (actual) sellout crowd at Fenway.
Drew Pomeranz was…. not good.
Stay safe and keep your loved ones close, Sox fans. The takes are coming. Look, Pomeranz did not have a good first outing in a Red Sox uniform. There’s not a whole lot of ways to sugar coat five runs on eight hits over just three innings. But if I was going to sugar coat it, it would go something like this: Pomeranz looked just fine over the first three innings, had to sit for 30 minutes while the Sox put up five runs in the bottom of the third, came out to start the fourth rusty and got knocked around. His final inning went like this: walk, single, home run, single, home run, single, single, merciful replacement via Robbie Ross. Through his first three innings, he was getting away with high fastballs because he was getting good movement on it. In the 4th, that pitch flattened out and the best team in baseball made him pay for it. Both home runs he let up were off 89 mph fastballs.
That’s the thing about pitching performances though – they’re all good ones until they’re not. Pomeranz’s first start in Boston will go down as a failure, and rightfully so. He was not good last night, but let’s not storm Dombrowski’s home with pitchforks in one hand and Anderson Espinoza’s scouting report in the other just yet.
Various Shouts
Shouts to Matt Barnes, who pitched three innings of solid relief, including escaping the bases-loaded, no one out fiasco in the 6th. He threw 46 pitches and ended up being the star of the night on an evening when Hanley played the best baseball game of his career. The Sox bullpen seems to be a confusing puzzle where all of the pieces could fit in different spots and also where all the pieces get injured a lot, but Barnes has been a reliable arm and Twitter was very impressed with him last night. The 8th inning set-up role beckons.
Shouts to Sandy Leon, who continues to make me audibly, inadvertently laugh when watching him play baseball. Last night he had a triple AND a home run. I don’t know. It will be over at some point and we’ll all be worse off for it.
Shouts to whoever decided to throw those throwbacks back. They looked sharp and have the full support of at least one author at BP Boston.
Shouts to the Red Sox as a whole, who have won 8 of 9 and are now in first place in the AL East.
Coming Next
The Minnesota Twins are in town for four games. Just like the San Francisco series was a real test for the Sox, the next series should also be a real test, but the kind of test where you’re expected to get an A or else you’re grounded. The Twins have the second-worst record in all of baseball. They are, by many stats, one of the worst hitting teams in the league. They are also, by many more stats, one of the worst pitching teams in the league. Thursday’s first pitch is at 7:10pm as Steven Wright takes on Tyler Duffey.
Photo by Bob DeChiara/USA Today Sports Images
Truly an incredible night for Hanley. He would have been a star even if he only hit 3 singles. Where did this, at least, silver glove defense come from? In addition to the game turning DP he made at least 3 other excellent plays.