Just days ago Kenley Jansen was living the dream. The veteran closer had been all but automatic to start his first season in Boston, and on Wednesday he became the seventh player in MLB history to record 400 career saves.
Since then it’s been an abrupt crash back to reality.
A day after blowing the save in Friday night’s loss to St. Louis, Jansen endured another ninth-inning meltdown, giving up three runs to sink the Red Sox in a deflating 4-3 loss to the Cardinals. Jansen walked two to start the inning, allowed an RBI double and was ultimately undone by a two-run error by Kiké Hernández, who threw away what would have been the game-ending double play ball and allowed St. Louis to take the lead.
The disastrous ninth also squandered an outstanding effort by Chris Sale, who pitched his best outing since undergoing Tommy John surgery .
Jansen’s confounding outing veered into the absurd when he was called for three quick pitch violations, two of which came against Willson Contreras. Much of the confusion stemmed from whether or not Contreras, who appeared to be looking at Jansen before he had both feet in the box, was adequately alert to the pitcher when Jansen began his delivery.
Jansen acknowledged afterwards that he let the situation disrupt his performance, while also suggesting that Contreras got away with some gamesmanship.
“(It disrupted me) a lot, that’s the mistake I did, that threw me off. It messed up my whole game,” Jansen said. “The explanation is he has to have both feet in the box, but you can clearly see we can’t mess with the hitters but they’re looking at us and one foot is out, I’m ready to come at you. That’s what I see, and I guess the hitters can mess with us.”
Red Sox manager Alex Cora also suggested there may have been confusion over whether or not the umpire adequately communicated what Jansen was being called for, noting that he signaled for a pitch clock violation even though Jansen was delivering the ball well before the timer went off.
“The hitter needs to be in the box and alert at the latest at eight (seconds). The pitcher needs to give the hitter time to be in the box and alert. I think the whole thing was like they were getting in the box at eight and Kenley was going already.” Cora said. “The whole confusion was he kept going like this (signaling a timer violation), I don’t know if there’s another sign for what was happening. I think the rule is the rule and that’s what happened.”
The unfortunate ending overshadowed what had previously been a triumphant day for Sale, who appears to have turned the corner and rediscovered his form as a legitimate ace.
Sale pitched eight excellent innings, allowing three hits and a walk over eight innings while striking out nine. The one blemish on Sale’s day was a solo home run by Nolan Arenado to lead off the top of the seventh, but he followed that up with three straight strikeouts and didn’t allow another baserunner the rest of the way.
“My last outing I let my emotions spill over and it took my guys behind me to kind of get me back on track and calm me down,” Sale said. “The worst thing you can do after giving up a homer is starting to nibble and walk guys, so I really wanted to attack that next hitter and get back on track.”
By the time all was said and done, Sale had thrown 110 pitches over eight innings, both the most since the summer of 2019. Most encouragingly, Sale was still throwing gas right to the end, with his final pitch a 97.2 mph fastball to draw a Tommy Edman flyout to right field.
Sale’s ERA on the season is still an underwhelming 5.40, but he’s now clearly trending in the right direction. Over his last three starts Sale has posted a 2.21 ERA with 24 strikeouts over 20.1 innings, and the rotation as a whole has started to get better results in recent days too, with James Paxton and Brayan Bello both pitching gems in Boston’s prior two games.
Though the Red Sox offense ultimately didn’t score enough to win, they did give Sale an early lead and what seemed enough breathing room for him and Jansen to work with. Rafael Devers put Red Sox ahead in the bottom of the first with an RBI single, and in the third Pablo Reyes doubled in his first Boston at bat, Alex Verdugo was hit by a pitch and then Rob Refsnyder (3 for 4) drove both in with a two-run double to make it 3-0.
Once Sale was finished, Jansen took the ball and normally you’d think that would have been that. Instead the Red Sox once again left with a bitter taste in their mouths and now find themselves back in last place in the AL East.
Boston (22-18) will look to salvage the series Sunday, with Corey Kluber (2-4, 6.29 ERA) slated to take the mound against Miles Mikolas (1-1, 5.40). The game will be broadcast on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball and first pitch is slated for 7 p.m.