Before I get to what Andrew Benintendi did last night, I want to talk about what David Price did. Coming into last night’s game, Price owned an ERA north of seven while pitching at Globe Life Park. With that in mind, I was not expecting his start yesterday to go well, surprisingly, I was wrong. Price managed to pitch into the seventh inning while not allowing a single run. There Were plenty of baserunners, eight in total for Texas, but they could not score a single run off of Price. The southpaw also struck out nine, a new season high. He came out to start the seventh, gave up a walk, and was taken out of the game. It looked like a blister of some sort on his pitching hand was bothering him, and that’s why he was taken out, but Manager John later said that it was because of the pitch count. Blaine Boyer came in to relieve Price, and he ate some innings despite
not pitching all that well. The Rangers scored three times off of Boyer, all in the eighth, and all those runs were driven in on a three-run bomb off the bat of Mike Napoli. Robby Scott would come in to pitch the ninth and end the game, but not before giving up a solo home run to Delino DeShields. Like I said, surprising stuff from Price, it looks like he’ll make his next start in Tampa on Sunday, the last game before the All-Star break.
The bottom half of yesterday’s lineup was responsible for most of the offensive production. The 5-9 hitters, Ramirez, Benintendi, Vazquez, and Lin went a combined 16 for 24 at the plate, scoring 9 times and driving in 10 runs. The biggest star though, is obviously Andrew Benintendi. All the talk about Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge, but you can’t knock what this Red Sox rookie has done in his first full season. Last night, Benintendi did not record an out, reaching base all five times he was up. He nearly hit for the cycle too, but hit his second home run of the game instead. Going back to Monday night’s game, Benintendi has driven in eight runs in his last six at-bats. He also made one heck of a catch too in the fourth, robbing Mike Napoli of an extra base hit and potentially an RBI.
How about the other rookie who has come out of nowhere, Tzu-Wei Lin? A 23 year-old infielder in Portland surprisingly gets called up about a week and a half ago and he can do no wrong. His second three-hit game last night puts his OPS at .949, meanwhile Pablo Sandoval’s career OPS with the Red Sox is only at .646, makes you think.
Almost forgot to mention that Jackie Bradley Jr. hit his eleventh home run of the season last night as well while raising his BA to .284 on the season, a nice turnaround for sure.
Doug Fister makes his third start for the Red Sox today in the series finale. It could be his last start for a while if Eduardo Rodriguez comes back and pitches like he did before he got hurt.
49 down, ? to go.
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