Chris Sale’s feast-or-famine season continues, and with it, the Red Sox’s ups and downs.
After striking out 11 Minnesota Twins batters in his last game, the veteran southpaw had the polar opposite start in Baltimore Monday night. Over five innings, he allowed five earned runs on nine hits (eight hard-hit), walked one, and couldn’t get a single strikeout. Blowing a 4-0 lead early, the Red Sox lost the series opener 5-4.
It’s a new twist on a tale that’s become all too familiar for Boston this year: instead of the starter putting the lineup in an early hole, he gave away an early lead, leaving behind a mess the team couldn’t clean up. They’re back at .500 yet again.
Sale’s location was all over the place early, but he was able to avoid trouble for a few frames, thanks to a few lucky breaks and a some stellar defense. The Orioles renovated Camden Yards’ left field wall last year, pushing it back to prevent home runs, which helped the veteran lefty with Adley Rutschman in the first inning. Jarren Duran, who’s looked like a completely different player this season, made an impressive running catch in the second, to rob James McCann of an extra-base hit, and Connor Wong continued his trend of robbing base-stealers, throwing Ramon Urias out at second to end the inning.
The offense lifted Sale up, too, at first. Masataka Yoshida led off the second with a smooth liner to left-center, and reached base in all four plate appearances, going 3-for-3 and drawing a walk in his last time up. He’s 10-for-20 over his last five games.
In between, Triston Casas demolished a first-pitch home run, sending it 426 feet out of the ballpark at 111 mph for a 1-0 lead in the second. Connor Wong led off the third with a walk, and scored on Alex Verdugo’s single.
Rafael Devers demolished a two-run homer, his ninth of the season, to make it 4-0. The 148th regular-season home run of his career was his 11th in Baltimore, at least two more than he’s hit anywhere else on the road. A 387-foot, 115-mph bullet, it was the hardest-hit ball of the game, and traveled the second-longest distance, outdone only by Casas’ homer. According to Orioles media relations, Devers hit the 118th Eutaw Street home run in history, and the 63rd by an opponent, but only the seventh by a Red Sox hitter.
But it was only a matter of time before the Orioles got to Sale, and once they did, they didn’t stop. Adam Frazier drove in Cedric Mullins to cut the deficit to 4-1 in the third, and a quartet of one-out hits tied things up in the fourth. They took a 5-4 lead in the fifth, on a Jorge Mateo leadoff double and Austin Hays RBI single.
Through five, Sale induced exactly two swings-and-misses, and didn’t strike out a single batter. Excluding his July 2022 start against the Yankees, which he exited after a line-drive come-backer fractured his pinky in the first inning, he hadn’t had a zero-strikeout game since 2011, when he was in the White Sox bullpen. When he didn’t return for the sixth inning, it officially became the 20th zero-strikeout game of his career.
“I [expletive]-ing sucked,” he told reporters after.
The offense deflated when he started giving up runs, and never found a way to re-inflate. After putting up a 4-0 lead in the third, the Boston bats went 1-2-3 in each of the next five innings, and only sent four up to bat before the final out. Eight of the nine hits Sale gave up were hard-hit; the Red Sox lineup only collected eight hard-hit balls the entire game, and only one after Orioles starter Dean Kremer left the game.
The collective loss notwithstanding, it must be said that Boston’s defense has vastly improved. Alex Verdugo made several Gold Glove-caliber catches, and Yu Chang ignited multiple double plays before leaving the game with left wrist pain. (He’ll have tests done on Tuesday.)
Nonetheless, It’s the kind of frustrating game that will sting for a while.