After watching their 1-0 lead turn into a grand slam-fueled 4-1 loss on Friday night, the Red Sox needed to turn the tables.They were on top three times in Saturday’s game, but nothing they did – not Tyler O’Neill’s pair of late-inning go-ahead homers, nor Josh Winckowski’s incredible Houdini moment to escape bases-loaded – was […]
After watching their 1-0 lead turn into a grand slam-fueled 4-1 loss on Friday night, the Red Sox needed to turn the tables.
They were on top three times in Saturday’s game, but nothing they did – not Tyler O’Neill’s pair of late-inning go-ahead homers, nor Josh Winckowski’s incredible Houdini moment to escape bases-loaded – was enough to keep the Dodgers at bay. Former Red Sox utility-man Kiké Hernández came off the bench and provided the Dodgers with two clutch game-tying hits, and after three and a half hours, Will Smith’s walk-off in the bottom of the 11th sealed a 7-6 win for Los Angeles and handed Boston their second brutal loss in a row.
It was going to be an uphill climb from the start. The lefty-heavy Red Sox lineup has struggled against left-handers all season – now 12-16 against southpaw starters – and rookie Justin Wrobleski blanked them for 4.1 innings, allowing three hits and two walks, but incurring no damage. The lefty relied almost exclusively on his four-seam fastball (61%), and the Red Sox could wrap neither heads nor bats around the pitch, striking out five times on the pitch. (Boston is now 12-16 against left-handed starters.)
But the rookie southpaw wasn’t the true reason why the Red Sox failed to stake an early claim to the game. After out-hitting the Dodgers 9-4 and going 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position on Friday night, the Boston bats continued to falter when presented with run-scoring opportunities. Brayan Bello made one of his better starts of the season and gave his team ample time to put something together; they had a man in scoring position in each of the first four innings, and never capitalized.
In his first career start against the Dodgers, the Red Sox right-hander went six innings and allowed three earned runs on five hits, walked one, struck out seven, and induced a game-leading 17 swings & misses, all on just 82 pitches. His final line belies how dominant he looked over the first five frames. With the exception of Gavin Lux, who went deep for a 1-0 lead in the second and doubled in the fifth, Bello held the Dodgers lineup to one hit – a single by Freddie Freeman – through five.
Bello was only at 61 pitches after five, but when Los Angeles knocked him around and scored a pair in the sixth, Alex Cora decided to go to the bullpen in the seventh.
