The Sox pull out a thriller against the Rangers. Yay!
We told you. After a rough half of a season, Brayan Bello is finally steadying the ship. As Jacob Roy wrote in his latest Anatomy of Inning piece, when Bello has both his slider and changeup working, hitters have no choice but to guess. Tonight, he threw those two pitches 55 times, generated 10 swinging strikes.
But, sadly for both Brayan Bello and for us, the lineup didn’t do too much to support him. After six innings of one-run ball, Bello left the game with just a three-run lead. (And two of those runs were scored via bases loaded walks. Those count as honest-to-goodness runs, but they have kind of a freak show vibe to them that leaves me unsettled. YMMV.) As some person I’m not going to bother looking up once said, “a two-run lead is the most dangerous lead in baseball.” Anonymous Platitude Dude proved correct, as Cory Seager tied the game up with a home run the very next inning.
With a fatigued bullpen, Alex Cora turned to Josh Winckowski in the tenth, even though he’d thrown three innings on Saturday. Winck did the job a pitcher’s supposed to do: he didn’t allow a baserunner in his inning. But when the Manfred Man is on in extras, it’s not enough to prevent baserunners, you’ve got to prevent contact. Back-to-back grounders gave the Ranges a one-run lead.
After the Rangers plated their extra innings run in one of the most boring ways possible, Enmanuel Valdez showed them how the cool kids do with with a towering shot to the triangle to lead-off the bottom of the tenth. Then, in need of a pinch-hitter, this happened:
Netflix camera is staring Mickey Gasper in the face as the lefty gets the call. He’s got a bat
— Jake (@Jake3Roy) August 13, 2024
. . . but the New England native making his MLB debut failed to get the walk-off hit, merely working a scrappy walk.
But that was ok, because then Boston Rob did this:
“Goodnight from Fenway”
Rob Refsnyder lines a #walkoff single! pic.twitter.com/OBu224HxX6
— MLB (@MLB) August 13, 2024
A walk-off win at Fenway. The Red Sox goal right now is to win and stay alive. Tonight, they did.
Three Studs
Brayan Bello: 6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 5 K
Rob Refsnyder: 2-5, 1 RBI, 1 BB, 2 K
Enmanuel Valdez: 1-1, 2B, RBI
Three Duds
Rafael Devers: 0-4, 3 K
Masataka Yoshida: 0-5, 2 K
Bailey Horn: 0.1 IP, 1 HR, 2 R