Right in the middle of a one-sided game last night at Fenway Park, where the Red Sox routed the New York Yankees in the most convincing win against their rivals in years, was Jackie Bradley Jr.
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And the Red Sox are coming off a awful 2015 campaign that saw them limp to a second consecutive last-place finish.
“It was still early, ” recounted Bradley, “and I felt like I was putting together some good at-bats”. “You take care buddy, and I am going to hit a home run for you tonight”.
Ortiz added the fifth home run of his farewell season – and second in two nights against the Yankees – in the seventh inning, taking Johnny Barbato’s fastball over the right-field fence.
Pineda departed after the fifth with 106 pitches, but the Red Sox doubled the lead in the sixth with two runs against Chasen Shreve and Kirby Yates. It was the first of two strikeout games in his career.
Yankees: Manager Joe Girardi said OF Aaron Hicks, who pinch-hit in the eighth inning after missing the last six games with left shoulder bursitis, should be ready to return to the starting lineup Sunday.
The 14-10 Red Sox have won six of seven and eight of their last 11.
Here are some more notes from Saturday’s win.
Before Friday’s game, the Red Sox had the most stolen bases in the American League and the fewest home runs. He got pounded for a 5.81 ERA through 20 starts and was so bad the Red Sox placed him on the disabled list with a triceps strain and a fragile psyche.
Cockrell insisted he wasn’t concerned about the Yankees’ recent hitting woes, then watched his team close out an 8-14 April with its second shutout loss of the season.
Will that include punching a postseason ticket for the first time since 2013, when Boston won the most recent of its trio of 21st century championships and Ortiz hit five jacks and drove in 13 runs in 16 games?
Following Bradley Jr.’s two-out double off the Green Monster, Mookie Betts blooped a two-run double in front of Beltran in right for a 2-0 lead in the second. We’re talking about a pitcher who struck out 22 of the first 35 batters he faced this season, and a pitcher who has only allowed 13 home runs now in 193 career innings.
Given the way the Yankees have been playing, I’d say Comcast customers are the lucky ones. But previous year over the season’s final two months with the Toronto Blue Jays, Price tossed 26.1 innings against the Yankees and only allowed five runs. Bradley capped the inning with his third extra-base hit of the night – a two-run triple. He has a 1.47 (6/36.2) ERA in the six team wins versus an 8.80 (29/29.2) ERA in the six defeats. “We’re going to score a lot of runs”. He’s using all fields and hitting with authority. Smith pitched another clean, nine-pitch inning Saturday. He faces Carlos Martinez, who has won his first four starts while compiling a 1.93 ERA. Ortiz, 40, the Red Sox superstar designated hitter, is retiring after the 2016 Major League Baseball season. Betances is a hard guy to make contact against, let alone make the type of contact Ortiz did on Friday night.
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In Baltimore, Nolan Reimold hit a tiebreaking three-run homer in the seventh inning for the Orioles.
