Astros 5, Red Sox 4: Arrighetti & Meatballs

The Red Sox lose a close bullpen game to the Astros

So here’s something that’s not good:

First things first: the presence of the Oakland A’s in the top right quadrant serves as an important reminder that, in baseball, even 19 games counts as a small sample size. The Boston Red Sox probably won’t have the second-worst pitching staff in baseball for the remainder of the year. But right now they do.

So this afternoon, as they turned to a bullpen game against the Astros — despite having just lost two in a row thanks in no small part to a fatigued bullpen — it was understandable if you didn’t have high expectations.

All things considered, the pitching did a maybe-adequate job. If you think “maybe-adequate” is damning with faint praise, I invite you to take another look at that chart up there and consider how the postseason picture would look right now if Red Sox pitching had been maybe-adequate in the second half, instead of whatever you want to call what it actually is. Josh Winckowski made it two batters further than his planned nine, completing the first three fames with little damage. The staff as a whole walked just two batters and limited traffic in general. The Sox were in the game.

But it’s hard to win a game when you give up four homers — even if three of them were solo shots. And in today’s case, the Sox’ league-leading offense was kept at bay by something called a Spencer Arrighetti, who had the best start of his very young and, thus far, very not good career. Arrighetti struck out 13 Sox hitters through 7 innings of clean and efficient work. The Sox got to Houston’s bullpen in the later innings to make things interesting and even put the tying run on second with no outs in the 9th, but it was too little, too late.

Three Studs

Josh Winckowski: 3 IP, 2 H, 1 HR, 1 R, 1 K, 0 BB

He might’ve gotten a touch lucky with some hard-hit balls that found gloves, but this is about as good of a stat line as you can expect from Winck in this situation.

Masataka Yoshida: 1-4, HR, 1 RBI, K

It would be quite the feat if Masa finished the year with an OPS over .800. He’s trying.

Danny Jansen: 1-4, HR, HR, 1 RBI, K

I’ve said this before (though not to anyone currently reading, so don’t feel bad if it doesn’t ring a bell), but I’d like to see Jansen get the lion’s share of starts behind the plate from here on out. Connor Wong has been a pretty good catching option this year; Jansen has been one of the better catchers in baseball for the past three seasons.

Three Duds

Brad Keller: 4 IP, 6 H, 2 BB, 6 K, 3 ER, 2 HR

Dom Smith: 0-3, 2 K

The Out of Town Scoreboard: 4-1 record on the day by the Orioles, Yankees, and Royals. The Sox chances of hanging in the division race hang in the balance this week.