As far as starting pitching matchups go, Garrett Crochet vs. Chris Sale on a Friday night at Fenway Park is about as good as it gets.
On one side you have the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner and a former Red Sox ace in Sale, and on the other you have Crochet, Boston’s new ace who is traveling down a similar path to greatness.
Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who knows both as well as anyone, said prior to the game that the two are more alike than just being dominant lefties who came to Boston in trades with Chicago White Sox.
“There’s a lot of things that they have in common,” Cora said. “The most important one is when they go out there they want to win, they want to win bad.”
Crochet and Sale lived up to the bill and delivered a heavyweight pitchers duel, but in the end Sale and the Atlanta Braves were just a little bit better, spoiling the debut of Boston’s new City Connect uniform by picking up a 4-2 win at Fenway Park.
Sale and Crochet each went seven innings, but Crochet allowed two solo home runs compared to Sale’s one. Boston also fell victim to numerous miscues on the base paths, along with another bullpen meltdown in the top of the ninth.
Cora predicted both starters would have a little extra juice on their fastballs Friday night, and he was right on the money. Crochet’s fastball, cutter and sinker were all a tick faster than usual, with the four-seamer topping out at 97.7 mph, while Sale looked like he’d been shot out of a cannon. All of the former Red Sox ace’s pitches were significantly faster than their season averages, with the fastball topping out at 98.7 mph.
The two lefties used their impressive arsenals to full effect.
Crochet struck out eight batters over the course of his outing, striking out each of the first three batters he faced on 11 pitches before finishing his night in the seventh by striking out Michael Harris II and Stuart Fairchild to leave the bases loaded. In the meantime he retired 12 straight batters from the third inning into the seventh, and overall he allowed seven hits with no walks on 103 pitches.
Crochet now leads the majors in innings pitched (63) and the American League in strikeouts (73), but he wasn’t perfect on Friday, and his only mistakes proved costly.
After starting his outing strong, Crochet allowed back-to-back solo home runs to Matt Olson and Sean Murphy to start the top of the second. The two shots landed in almost the exact same spot atop the Green Monster, giving the Braves a 2-0 lead.
That ultimately proved to be all the offense Sale needed.
After issuing a four-pitch walk to Jarren Duran to start the game, Sale settled down and kept the Red Sox off the scoreboard all the way into the seventh inning. Over the first six innings the Red Sox managed just five baserunners against Sale, and on two occasions the club squandered a potential scoring chance by getting thrown out on the base paths to end the inning.
The most egregious instance came in the third when Duran hit a one-out triple and Rafael Devers walked to put runners at the corners. Alex Bregman struck out to take the threat of a sacrifice fly off the table, but before Rob Refsnyder even had a chance to take on Sale, Devers inexplicably attempted to steal second and was thrown out by so much that he wound up in a rundown.
Duran would later be caught stealing to end the sixth.
Boston finally inflicted some damage on Sale in the seventh when Refsnyder took his former teammate deep for a solo home run, making it 2-1, but a third mistake on the base paths kept the Red Sox from knocking Sale out. With two outs Nick Sogard hit a hard liner off the Green Monster, but the ball was quickly fielded by Braves left fielder Eli White, who easily threw out Sogard at second trying to stretch the single into a double.
That let Sale off the hook and allowed the lefty to finish with one run allowed over seven innings on five hits, two walks and eight strikeouts.
Boston squandered another scoring chance in the eighth when Carlos Narvaez walked and pinch runner David Hamilton stole second, but Ceddanne Rafaela, Duran and Devers weren’t able to bring him home to tie the game. Then things started unraveling in the ninth when Liam Hendriks and Brennan Bernardino collectively walked five Atlanta batters, including two with the bases loaded to give the Braves a 4-1 lead.
All those walks loomed large in the bottom of the ninth when Alex Bregman was hit by a pitch and came in to score on a Trevor Story RBI single, but that’s as close as the Red Sox could get as Wilyer Abreu flew out to end the game.