Martinez loses, wins
It wasn’t good, and certainly not the way Pedro Martinez wanted to make his return to Fenway Park.
Or actually, according to Martinez, it was.
“I’m not disappointed at all. I think I won the game on one side,” Martinez said after allowing eight runs, six earned over just three innings of work in Boston’s 10-2 blowout of the Mets. “Not even a win would give me the satisfaction I got from the fans.”
The Red Sox ran their winning streak to 11 games, launching an immediate attack on their former teammate, who came out in the first inning to thunderous applause from the sellout crowd, chanting, “Ped-ro. Ped-ro.”
He was gone after three to polite clapping and the taunting sing-songy “Ped-ro.”
“Obviously, he didn’t have his good stuff,” Mets manager Willie Randolph said. “He got caught up in the moment a bit.”
Martinez also admitted as much, confessing that he had some trouble sleeping the night before.
The three-inning performance is his shortest stint since a September, 2003 shortened playoff preparation at Tampa Bay. The eight runs he allowed were the most since that disastrous weekend at Yankee Stadium two years ago, the game that served as the precursor to the 6-4 loss a week later to New York, after which Martinez uttered his famous fatherly quote.
You might remember that entire last month of 2004 was a mess for Martinez, as he struggled to just a 2-4 record with a 4.95 ERA. That was the reason Red Sox fans held their collective breath as he prepared for his ALDS start in Game 2 (a game he won, 8-3 in Anaheim).
This month has been worse. With tonight’s loss he’s now 2-3 in June with an extremely un-Pedro-like 6.23 ERA. He hasn’t been great in interleague play, the only start he’s made against an AL team that was impressive was against, ironically, his “daddy,” a seven-inning shutout on May 20. Since then he’s lost to Baltimore. He’s lost to the Red Sox. Well, in score only. Remember, he won too tonight.
“I will always remember that as one of the best memories of my life,” he said.
Martinez admitted afterward that he didn’t have anything and couldn’t spot the ball well. The one time he tried to come inside with a fastball, he said, he ended up hitting Mark Loretta on the wrist.
“The Red Sox are a hot team ready to unload on anybody,” Martinez said.
The 11-game winning streak is Boston’s longest since 1995, the last season the Red Sox (solely) won the AL East division title.
Tomorrow they have a chance to sweep their fourth straight three-game series from a National League club when Curt Schilling and Tom Glavine go head-to-head. The only time Martinez can face his former club again would be in October, in the World Series.
He wouldn’t discuss that possibility at too much length after his fourth loss of the season. In record only.
“I won my game, the most important game to me,” he said.
Sure, but what about the other guys in the clubhouse? Not sure how much that particular game meant to them, exactly.
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