This time, the blame (or credit to Cleveland Indians starter Josh Tomlin, if you will) lies in the lack of offense, an issue Boston did not expect to see much of with such a power-packed lineup.
But the venerable Matt Harrison shut down the Sox on Sunday in Texas and Tomlin, who owns seven career wins, did the same on Tuesday, dominating a batting order that has yet to hit its stride.
After Tomlin led the Indians to a 3-1 win in the opener of a three-game series, Boston had managed a total of two runs in its last 20 innings. One came on Carl Crawford's humpback line-drive RBI single in the finale in Arlington. The other came on a 68-hop dribbler through the hole between first and second by Jarrod Saltalamacchia in the second inning Tuesday. That hit scored David Ortiz with the first run of the night, but J.D. Drew was thrown out at home on the play trying to score from second.
Nobody knew at the time that the Sox wouldn't sniff another run all night, with the exception of a last-gasp, but fruitless, effort in the ninth that saw runners get stranded at the corners.
In fact, roughly two hours of baseball was played without Boston even getting a hit. Dustin Pedroia's leadoff single in the fourth would stand as the club's last hit until the same guy had another single with one out in the ninth. In between, two men reached on a walk and another on an Indians throwing error. Nobody got into scoring position until Pedroia's threat in the ninth.
Hitters never like to perform their task in cold weather. It was in the low 40s to start the game. But both teams had to handle the conditions, and while Cleveland didn't hammer the ball all over the park, it managed to make the most of its opportunities and to work over Josh Beckett, who needed 106 pitches to go five so-so innings.
"I don't think the weather had much to do with it," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. "Both teams had to deal with it. [Tomlin] had a lot of quick outs, and on the other side, once they got to the third inning they made Josh work so hard.
"They grinded out the at-bats. That’s what we wanted to do, they just did it better than us."
That's nothing new. Boston has been outclassed in pretty much every department so far. Its rotation was severely outpitched in the sweep down in Texas, and its offense, which could never draw an on-paper comparison with Cleveland's, looked as if it had some late-night plans to tend to on Tuesday — Tomlin used just 91 pitches in his seven innings of work, and reliever Tony Sipp got through the eighth in just seven.
When it was all said and done, the offense many had tabbed for 900 runs or more had finished its fourth game having scored a grand total of 12. In that 20-inning, two-run span referenced earlier, just one of the team's nine hits went for extra bases, Drew's double in the second inning Tuesday.
Francona has actually surprised some people with how often he has shuffled the lineup, even with the struggles. Last year, he utilized the exact same lineup for the first four games of the year, despite the fact that the team finished that stretch with totals of four, one and three runs.
Some of that has to do with the fact that there are several new components (Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, and Saltalamacchia, specifically) which Francona not only wants to get going but also for whom the manager has to find a suitable spot in the lineup.
With a home opener vs. the New York Yankees looming on Friday, the skipper may play around with the lineup a bit more in order to make sure the offense is not a target of criticism once the team gets back home. The pitching already received its fair share, and the troops are lining up at the border to get their shots in at the suddenly silent bats.
