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Rays 2, Red Sox 1: Pivetta’s Strong Start Not Enough to Overcome The .500 Magnet

September 28, 2024 by Over the Monster

Tampa Bay Rays v Boston Red Sox
Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

The Red Sox are really good at playing mediocre baseball.

For the 24th time this season, the Red Sox finished a game with a .500 record. They have now hit the mark at all of the following checkpoints:

1-1

2-2

7-7

9-9

10-10

19-19

22-22

24-24

26-26

27-27

28-28

29-29

30-30

31-31

32-32

33-33

34-34

35-35

70-70

74-74

75-75

76-76

78-78

80-80

We’ll have to see if they hit it one more time on Sunday and finish the season 81-81, but boy would it be appropriate. If they don’t, I assume it will be because they finally figured out how to split a three game set.

The highlight of the night was good Nick Pivetta showing up one last time in what is likely his final start in a Red Sox uniform. In classic Pivetta fashion, he looked absolutely awesome for a brief stretch in this game (retiring 11 in a row at on point), but finished with a line that wasn’t quite as great as that spell of dominance indicated.

Tonight that meant two runs allowed in 6.2 innings of work, and since the offense was anemic again, that wasn’t good enough.

Pivetta showed emotion both on the mound and in the dugout after his start as the best years of his career have been in Boston. This display really stood out to me on the same day Kenley Jansen decided to pack it up and leave early.

Kenley Jansen went home and his locker/nameplate were replaced at Fenway:

“He went home,” Cora said. “I talked to him this week. As soon as it was over, two days ago, he wasn’t going to pitch. There’s other stuff we talked about, other stuff that’s going on with him, so yeah.”

— Chris Cotillo (@ChrisCotillo) September 27, 2024

Imagine the pitcher you’d get if you put Nick Pivetta’s give a crap meter in Jansen’s body.

Speaking of good pitchers, you know who was also on the mound tonight? Max Fried down in Atlanta. He was shutting down the Royals for 8.2 innings of scoreless baseball in the thick of a playoff race. Remember what is was like to have a guy like that on the mound every fifth day?

I mention this because Fried is a free agent at the end of the year and he should absolutely be one of the targets. There’s some symmetry there too if Pivetta makes his last start in a Red Sox uniform on the same night Fried makes his last regular season start in a Braves uniform, and it all happens because there’s no more room for Pivetta at the bottom of the rotation because the Sox actually paid for a real horse at the top.


Offensively, the Sox were again listless, just as they have been for much of September. They once again reached double digits in strike outs, and only had one extra base hit all night; a double by Triston Casas in the sixth inning. They have just 61 extra base hits for the month after racking up 91 in April, 87 in May, 90 in June, 109 in July, and 93 in August. In addition to their bullpen, this power outage is a huge reason they fell out of the playoff race.

Studs

Nick Pivetta: He pitched well enough to go out with a win.

Luis Guerrero: Scoreless in 1.1 innings, and still hasn’t allowed a run since he’s been called up.

Vaughn Grissom: Of the Red Sox six hits tonight, he had three of them.

Duds

Trevor Story: 0-4 with two strike outs

Connor Wong: 0-4 with two strike outs

Zach Penrod: He replaced Pivetta, faced three batters, and didn’t get any of them out.

Together, the top five guys in the lineup went 2-19 with seven strike outs.

Filed Under: Red Sox

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