Truth be told, I did not have a ton of time to write up this recap of last night’s game, so I’m going to keep it as quick as possible with my three stars of the night and some other notes from this win.
Third Star: Chris Sale
6 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 10 K. 100 pitches (69 nice strikes), extended his scoreless innings streak to 23, picked up his 200th strikeout of 2018 in record-breaking fashion, and lowered his ERA on the season to 2.04.
Second Star: Rafael Devers
0/3 heading into the bottom half of the ninth, minutes after the Twins had taken a 3-2 lead off of Craig Kimbrel.
Facing off against Minnesota’s closer Fernando Rodney, crushes a 2-1 94 MPH fastball into the Red Sox bullpen to send this game into extras. 112.1 MPH off the bat on his 15th big fly of the season.
First Star: Mookie Betts
Who else? First at bat of the bottom of the tenth. Second pitch of the at bat. Launches a 89 MPH fastball off of Twins reliever Matt Belisle to send everyone at Fenway home happy with the 4-3 win.
Honorable Mentions: Jackie Bradley Jr. & Steve Pearce
Jackie Bradley Jr. put the Red Sox on the board in the fifth with his eighth home run of the season, good for two runs.
Steve Pearce, after a defensive miscue in the seventh, redeemed himself a few minutes later by starting and finishing an inning ending 3-6-3 double play.
All and all, with the 4-3 win on Friday, the Red Sox avoided their first three game losing streak since the end of April. The bullpen certainly was not great for the second night in a row, but the team was able to come through regardless.
At 72-33 on the year now, Boston now holds a five game lead over the New York Yankees in the AL East thanks to their game against the Royals getting rained out yesterday.
Looking to even up the season series at three games a piece, Rick Porcello takes the hill for the Red Sox later tonight. He’ll be matched up against another righty in the Twins’ Jake Odorizzi, a pitcher Boston should be familiar with given the five seasons he spent with the Tampa Bay Rays.
First pitch of the third game of the series is scheduled for 7:10 PM ET on Saturday.
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