The Tampa Bay Rays hammered ex-teammate David Price, blew a three-run lead and then rallied for a wild 12-8 victory over the Boston Red Sox on Thursday. Price had a bad game, that’s it. Meanwhile Barnes was impressive, so there’s no reason to focus too much on the negative of this game. Betts’ homer an inning later put Boston ahead 5-0. Souza doubled in the go-ahead run with two outs in the eighth, and a two-run pinch-hit double by Corey Dickerson highlighted a three-run exhale of a ninth.
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Price was done after 3⅔ innings, his shortest start since last April when he lasted just 2⅓ innings in his fourth start of the season with the Tigers.
Price’s offense bailed him out, coming back to tie the game, so he wasn’t stuck with the loss.
“I felt good in the bullpen”, Price said. “And just didn’t do that today”. His sliders, for the majority of his starts, have looked more like cork-screwing fastballs down the heart of the strikezone; however, many of them have been mishit by the opposing lineups, possibly expecting them to loop in like lame ducks and then not moving to the locations they expected.
Price allowed eight runs in 3.2 innings to his former team the Tampa Bay Rays in the Red Sox’s 12-8 loss on Thursday.
Price still had five strikeouts through three innings but lost it in the fourth, retiring only one of the seven batters he faced, including a two-run homer by Curt Casali.
“I hadn’t thrown the ball the way that I know that I can the first two starts, ” he said. “I think he figured some things out late in spring training from just an arm slot standpoint”.
Chris Archer has admittedly not helped himself with his inefficiency, but the Tampa Bay Rays right-hander has also received paltry run support while adding to a winless stretch that dates back to September.
On the first warm day of the season, there were 20 runs on 30 hits, 16 of them for extra bases, off 11 pitchers. The Boston Red Sox are 5-2 this season when allowing three or less runs.
Longoria was retired his first time up, making him 0-for-10 against Price. In three starts since he has allowed eight earned runs over 14 2/3 innings for a 10.43 ERA.
Clearly, some adjustments have to be made – and fast. Instead, in two starts at home, Porcello has allowed only six runs.
“An emotional roller-coaster the whole way”, Evan Longoria said. Obviously I wish we won the game. “We were able to capitalize on that”.
It’s no coincidence, then, that the Sox went 4-6 against three American League East opponents and limped out of town with a 7-8 record overall and an embattled manager being second-guessed for every move he makes.
Dustin Pedroia (three hits) hit his first homer of the season and Xander Bogaerts also had three hits (and was robbed of another) for the Red Sox, who went 4-6 on their first homestand of the season. In the long run, they are likely to do more to make the Sox a better team than a worse one. “I’m seeing the glove a lot more clearly”, Porcello told ESPN.com.
He may not be good enough to justify his salary, but he’s starting to look better than we’ve given him credit for being. I’m sure he was unhappy with some of the pitches he threw to me but that’s what happens when you throw a pitch over the middle and a little bit up.
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Unsurprisingly, David Price knew what he was getting himself into when he signed with Boston. “Whenever you get five runs in the bottom half of the first inning, that’s unacceptable”.
