What we learned from the Red Sox handling their business in Kansas City
The Red Sox now get the Rays in a frenetic weekend neither team seems excited to take on.
COMMENTARY
Sometimes, sports surprise you. And sometimes, Chris Sale throws his first shutout as a member of the Red Sox against a 19-40 Royals team that was dispatched in largely short order: 8-3, 8-0, and 7-5 on Thursday, when Ryan Weber got them just four outs and six relievers cleaned up the mess.
“We got 27 [outs], we had the lead, and we move on,” said Alex Cora after Thursday’s finale, and whose team smacked 23 balls in excess of 100 mph in the three games, including Eduardo Nunez’s three-run, pinch-hit blast on Tuesday, J.D. Martinez’s impossible top-of-the-wall triple, and five just from Rafael Devers, who can hit them 425 feet when he bothers to lift the ball.
Thirty-seven RBIs in his last 37 games and zero fielding errors in his last 28 for Devers. That’ll do.
It wasn’t perfect, by any means. Martinez left Thursday’s game with back spasms, the third time those have been a time-costing issue. Michael Chavis went 1 for 13 with eight strikeouts, with no solid contact on fastballs up in the zone or anything else. Still, the offense is clicking, with five regulars sporting .360 on-base percentages, essentially four with .850 OPSes (Mookie Betts is at .849), and 31 runs the past four days.
Just in time for four games in 45 hours against Tampa, with its MLB-best 2.99 team ERA and its own freshly found momentum against an AL Central also-ran.
“We feel a heck of a lot better after having two wins for sure,’’ Rays manager Kevin Cash told reporters after a 6-1 win in Detroit.
That win, in that full-circle way the Red Sox never seem to escape, went to old pal Jalen Beeks. Beeks, the young pitcher sent south to acquire Nathan Eovaldi last season, is 5-0 with a 2.76 ERA, all those wins coming in a nine-outing stretch where he’s relieved the opener in the second or third inning. He’s thrown everywhere from nine to 91 pitches this year, and is turning that deal into the proverbial win-win.
He isn’t likely to figure into this weekend, though, not after 58 pitches on Thursday. Though this weekend is the sort of grinder that could see everyone involved, especially with Tampa in the midst of the same sort of grinder schedule the Red Sox are. (They’re playing 47 games in 48 days, and 21 in 20, and used five pitchers on Thursday while the Sox used seven.)
Friday at 7:10. Saturday at 1:05, then at 6:10 in a makeup from April, then Sunday at 1:05 again. As bizarre a set as the Rays are themselves.
There they still sit, fourth-best record in the American League at 37-23, five clear of the Red Sox (33-29). They were reportedly the runners-up for Craig Kimbrel’s services, which if nothing else proves their continued willingness to spend, while also drawing literally the smallest home crowds in the history of a franchise with a whole lot bleaker squads than this one. (Tampa held a flash sale, offering thousands of $5 tickets when it usually takes $15 to get yourself into the park via the box office, and still couldn’t sell them.)
Austin Meadows started hot, missed 15 games with a busted thumb, and came back hotter. He, Yandy Diaz, Tommy Pham, and Avisail Garcia hardly seem like a Murderer’s Row, but they are, and Thursday was the first time Tampa had them all in the same lineup since May 18. Fourteen hits in Detroit, with 16 in play at better than 100 mph from the team with more such balls than any other. (You’ll recall earlier my trying to impress you with the Sox mustering 23 in three games.)
Cora said himself on Thursday that the standings in June aren’t much on his mind.
“We just have to play better. When we feel like we’re clicking and playing our brand of baseball, then we’ll look and see where we’re at,” he said. “It might be eight, it might be two games, but we’ll just keep getting better and trust the process, and we should be there.”
This weekend, his team will be the one more depleted by injury, especially if Martinez can’t shake his back woes. (Know what doesn’t help that? Playing four games in 45 hours.) The visiting Rays pitch better than anybody, their lineup is back at full throat, and the series — independent of Tampa’s rightful inferiority complex when it plays the AL East superpowers — means a heck of a lot more to the home side still struggling to sustain momentum.
They did what they had to Kansas City. Tampa’s a whole different animal.
