Red Sox Walk-Off, Avoid Sweep at Hands of Astros
Last night, the Boston Red Sox came away with a big win against the Houston Astros on a walk-off single by Mitch Moreland. Moreland’s single gave the Red Sox their only win of the series after Houston took the first two games at Fenway Park.
This was obviously a pretty big series. Not in terms of playoff positioning, but watching the Red Sox face a legitimate World Series contender gets me excited. My excitement wasn’t peaked after this matchup though.
This isn’t the end all be all, but the series exposed the worries everybody has had about this Red Sox team. Their bullpen blew the very first game of the series and almost did it again last night, and with Matt Barnes out indefinitely with a hip injury the bullpen is even more suspect.
The silver lining coming from the series is that Craig Kimbrel looked back to normal last night. On 12 pitches, he struck out George Springer, Jose Altuve, and got Alex Bregman to line out to center field. 1,2,3.
In terms of everything else, the Red Sox looked okay. David price had a great start on Friday and Rick Porcello was solid last night. Eduardo Rodriguez had a rough start on Saturday but it was only his second start since coming off the disabled list, so I give him the benefit of the doubt.
The offense showed the ability all year to bat around any rotation, and that continued last night when J.D. Martinez hit his 40th homer of the season off former Cy Young Dallas Keuchel, so no worries there.
The bullpen still remains the biggest issue with this team. I’m beating a dead horse continually talking about it, but it’s apparent that this could be the downfall of the team in October.
-Jarrod Ribaudo (@Jribs53)
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