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Martín’s Revenge

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Red Sox fans came to appreciate the hard work and good nature of Martín Pérez in his two seasons with Boston. “Pérez Days” could be festive occasions at Fenway but the results at the end of the game weren’t always there.

Yes, there were bright spots, but in all, Pérez’ time ended with a 10-13 record and a 4.65 ERA. After a particularly rough stretch that yielded a 7.13 ERA in 11 starts, Pérez was demoted to the bullpen last August.

Not surprisingly, the team passed on a chance to re-sign him for 2022.

But the Red Sox front office, which seems to pride itself on finding undervalued talent (see Matt Strahm, Jake Diekman and Michael Wacha as examples), seems to have dropped the ball when it came to evaluating Pérez’ real value. His stuff is playing, and playing big for his new team, the Texas Rangers.

Historic in Texas

In 10 outings with Texas the season, Pérez is 4-2 with a Major League-best 1.42 ERA. For the month of May, his 0.64 ERA was the lowest by an American Leaguer any any single month since Johan Santana‘s 0.45 ERA of September 2004 (minimum 40.0 IP). Last week, against the formidable Rays, Pérez worked 7.0 shutout innings, allowing just three baserunners in all.

Texas has won seven of Pérez’ last eight starts. That’s no fluke. The 31-year-old Venezuela native has lasted at least 6.0 innings and hasn’t allowed more than one earned run in each of those games, tying him for the third-longest non-losing streak since earned runs became an official statistic in 1913. Only Hall of Famer Bob Gibson (11 games) and Jake Arrieta (10 games) have posted longer streaks. 

Pérez is now tied with another undervalued pitcher to whom Boston showed the door: Jon Lester, who similarly had eight such games in 2016 after leaving Boston for the Cubs.


Red Sox Sweep Rangers At Home For 1st Time Since 2008

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Rain Delay


Rain Delay flickr photo by Bart Hanlon shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license

Pretty sure you didn’t see that coming. On a cool and rainy night at Fenway, the Red Sox pounded out another ten hits on Thursday (for an American League-best 22nd time) to beat the Rangers 6-2 and sweep a very hot club right out of Boston—and right after Texas arrived riding a 10-game win streak.

It was the Red Sox’ first sweep of the Rangers in three games at Fenway Park since August 12-14, 2008. 

Texas has been a tough opponent for Boston. Since 2000, no Major League club has a better OPS against the Red Sox than the Rangers (.823). Even with the just-completed three game Sox sweep, the Rangers are 32-24 in that time for a .571 win percentage, the best such win percentage facing Boston of all American League opponents.

“The sweep is surprising,” Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus said after the game. “But that’s the beauty of baseball, I guess. You cannot take any team for granted. Even when you feel you’re playing at your best, stuff like this can happen.”

Solid Pitching Performance

The Sox outscored the Rangers 26-12 in this series, but the real story of Thursday’s win was the pitching. 

Feisty Drew Pomeranz, fresh off an on-screen argument with Manager John Farrell after his last outing, took the mound after a 28-minute rain delay, and was solid and in command. Pomeranz allowed one base runner through three innings before giving up a 370-foot home run to Andrus. Unshaken, he got the rest of the fourth and fifth innings unscathed.

In all, Pomeranz allowed two runs on four hits with one walk over 6.0 IP. More impressively, he struck out 11 Rangers, tying his strikeout career high of last August 25. Pomeranz’ fourth inning strikeout of Mike Napoli was the 500th of Drew’s career. In all, Napoli would strikeout four time for his 2nd golden sombrero of the season.

The Sox bullpen of Heath Hembree, Robby Scott, Matt Barnes, and Craig Kimbrel combined for 3.0 hitless, walkless innings with nine more strikeouts.

Kimbrel’s ninth inning of work, a non-save opportunity, included a rare four strikeouts after Nomar Mazara struck out but made it to first base on what was ruled a wild pitch. It was just the second ever four-strikeout inning of work by a Red Sox pitcher. The first was Tim Wakefield‘s ninth inning against the Royals on August 10, 1999.

When all was said and done, Red Sox pitching had struck out 20 Rangers to tie a major league record for a nine inning game. Boston has twice previously reached the 20 strikeout plateau on April 29, 1986 (against the Mariners) and on September 18, 1996 (against the Tigers). The other clubs to reach 20 total opponent strikeouts are the Nationals (2016), Angels (2012), and Cubs (1998).


Late Rally Earns Sox A Win

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Now this is more like it. 

The Red Sox rallied for an exciting late win on Wednesday, pounding out seven runs in the seventh inning to beat the Rangers 9-4. 

It was the third straight Sox win, with this one clinching a series victory regardless of Thursday’s outcome. The Sox have not swept the Rangers in a three-game set at Fenway since August, 2008. Wednesday’s win was made even more satisfying with the knowledge that Texas arrived in Boston having won 10 straight, baseball’s longest stretch of consecutive wins so far this season.

Is the Sox’ streaky offense finally here to stay? Only time will tell, of course, but it’s satisfying right now to note that Boston has scored 32 runs over the last three games, their first set of three games with nine or more runs scored since May 9-12, 2016.

Thrilling Lately

Late rallies are thrilling. Boston has outscored opponents 95-55 in the seventh inning and later this season. The club’s team AVG of .302 in innings seven to nine this season is the best in the major leagues. No other team is batting above .281 in late inning appearances.

For those prone to criticize Manager John Farrell‘s in-game strategy, Wednesday’s game may have left them at least temporarily speechless. Farrell injected Mitch Moreland and Josh Rutledge into the game in the seventh inning resulting in the club’s first pair of consecutive pinch hits since last September 5th. When Moreland drove in a run he tied Hanley Ramírez for the longest such streak by a Red Sox hitter this season (5 games).

Adding to the fun Wednesday was the major league debut of Sam Travis, who before his family in the stands, went 2-for-4 with his first MLB run scored. Travis is first Sox hitter with two hits in his MLB debut since Will Middlebrooks on May 2, 2012.

Speedy Sale Earn Wins

Chris Sale, who had the chance to beat his own MLB single-season record for most consecutive outings with 10+ strikeouts (8 games), fell short of the mark. Instead, Sale struck out six over 7.1 IP, allowing four runs (three earned) on six hits with one walk. Sale now was 101 strikeouts this season joining Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, and Roger Clemens as the only MLB  pitchers since 1900 with 100+ SO through 10 starts of any season according to ESPN.

Sale is the first Boston pitcher since Martinez in 2000 to allow three or fewer ER in 7.0+ IP in each of his first six home.

Official time for last night’s contest was two hours and 59 minutes. In Sale’s seven decisions this season all but one have completed in under three hours of play.


One Game, One Player, Two Slams

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He wasn’t considered a power hitter when the Red Sox acquired him, but Bill Mueller flashed plenty of it 13 years ago this month.

On a typically hot mid-summer Texas night, Mueller scorched the ball hitting three home runs including two grand slams. You read that right. Two grand slams. In consecutive innings. From both sides of the plate.

On that night, with Tim Wakefield on the mound, Grady Little at the helm, and David Ortiz contributing two doubles of his own, the Sox would beat Buck Showalter‘s Rangers 14-7 on their way to a date with destiny that would ultimately become another heartbreaking, cursed season and the end of the line for Manager Little.

Switch hitting Mueller would become one of 13 major league players to hit two grand slams in a single game, one of six to do it in consecutive innings (remarkably, the Cardinals Fernando Tatis did it in the same inning), and the only one to do it from both sides of the plate.

Mueller is the one of eight Red Sox and the most recent to drive in nine runs in a game. Since then, just eight other major league players had managed nine RBI in a nine inning game, most recently Mike Moustakas on September 12, 2015 with two home runs, including a grand slam, and a bases loaded single.

As rare as the prospect of multi-granny games might be, the Sox had seen them three other times in franchise history, more than any other major league club:

After the second slam, Mueller was lifted for Lou Collier, who appeared in just four Red Sox games and had just one hitless plate appearance in his brief time with the club. Collier would play a handful of games with the Phillies in 2004 before retiring after eight big league seasons, with all but those four Sox games in the National League.

Despite the dreadful ending of the season for the Red Sox in 2003, Mueller would earn the American League batting title, finishing with a .326 batting average. The next year he’d go 6-for-14 (.429) in the 2004 World Series to help the Sox beat the Cardinals and finally bring a championship to Boston. After working as a hitting coach with the Dodgers and Cubs, Mueller returned to his native St. Louis for a similar job with the Cardinals in 2015, where he works today.

Mueller was the last American Leaguer with two grand slams in a game and the most recent until the Nationals Josh Willingham connected for two on July 27, 2009.


Sox make shutout history

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It has been a long time since the Red Sox shutout a single club in three straight games.

The surprising Red Sox, still in the cellar of the division, blanked the Orioles in three consecutive games this past weekend for the first time in the history of the clubs’ match-ups.

It was just the 10th time in more than 100 seasons that the Red Sox have managed a club-record three consecutive games where the opponent failed to score. The last time was April 25-29, 2004 against the Yankees and the Rays.

Before the Orioles this weekend, the Sox have shutout a single club in three straight games just twice before and only once before at Fenway Park. On August 24-26, 1990, Boston won the back three of a four game set against the Blue Jays in Toronto with final scores of 2-0, 1-0, and 1-0.

You have to go all the way back to 1958 (and a team that doesn’t exist anymore) to find the Sox’ only other set of three game shutout wins at Fenway: September 19-21, a sweep over the Washington Senators with the final scores of 2-0, 2-0, 2-0.

MLB shutout history

Since 1914 the Cardinals and Orioles have had the longest streak of shutout wins, both clubs with streaks of five games each.

The Red Sox actually figured into the Orioles’ historic streak, which happened late in the 1974 season. Baltimore swept Boston at Fenway in a doubleheader September 2nd (1-0, 1-0) and then a shutout Boston again on September 4 (6-0). From there, the Orioles went on to shut out the Indians in the first of four games at Cleveland (2-0, 1-0).

MLB Shutout Win Streaks

As shown in the table above, the Indians, Rangers, Orioles, and Yankees are the only American League clubs in the past 100 years with shutout wins in 4 or more consecutive games.