BOSTON — A would-be pitchers’ duel between the Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays got out of hand in a hurry Tuesday night.
Red Sox starter Clay Buchholz was charged with five earned runs on eight hits after taking a shutout into the eighth.
The Rays sent nine men to the plate in their five-run eighth and added an insurance run on a Matt Joyce homer the following inning to seal a 6-2 win.
Read the full rundown of the Red Sox’s disastrous frame here, and take a look at some leftover notes from the American League East contest below.
— Yoenis Cespedes had himself a very eventful evening. First, the good:
Running on Cespedes is never a good idea, as Yunel Escobar found out in the third inning.
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Escobar actually injured himself on the play. He left the game and was diagnosed with a left knee sprain.
Cespedes also provided some offense for the Red Sox, singling off the glove of first baseman James Loney in the fourth and scoring the game’s first run on a double by Daniel Nava.
— And the not-so-good:
Cespedes misplayed a Ben Zobrist fly ball that plated the Rays’ first two runs. Cespedes mistimed his leap, and the ensuing carom off the Green Monster allowed Nick Franklin and Brandon Guyer — who took over for Escobar — to score with ease.
“That wall’s sort of intimidating,” Buchholz said after the game. “Standing out there in BP, it’s tough to make yourself go all the way back to it. But it is what it is. That’s going to happen a lot. I would have liked him to have caught it, but I can’t say that I think it should be caught or don’t think it should be caught. Tough play.”
Cespedes’ night ended with him being ejected for the first time in his career. The outfielder struck out looking to the bottom of the eighth, said something to the home plate umpire Jeff Nelson and immediately was told to hit the showers.
— Alex Cobb was dominant on the mound for Tampa Bay, holding the Red Sox to one run on five hits over seven innings of work. In his last 14 starts, Cobb, who was born in Boston but raised in Florida, has allowed more than two earned runs just once.
— Rusney Castillo went 0-for-4 with a strikeout in his Fenway Park debut but drove the ball to the warning track in right in his final at-bat. Manager John Farrell discussed the Cuban outfielders transition to the major leagues before the game.
“Our thought of him … is to just get him acclimated,” Farrell said. “To reserve judgement to a certain extent, what we’ve seen in four games has been fairly consistent with reports prior to his defection and ultimately coming to us. I think the total skills package — as we see, a guy that’s explosive. He’s shown good defense. We have to take the at-bats in the right context. It’s been a year-plus of no games played. More importantly, the objective is just to get him acclimated to this level and this environment.”
— Farrell confirmed before the game that knuckleballer Steven Wright will start Friday’s series opener against the New York Yankees. It’ll be Wright’s first start of the season after five relief appearances — four of which were very successful. The outlier came last Wednesday in Pittsburgh, when the right-hander allowed four runs on five hits in just one inning of work.
Photo via Charles LeClaire/USA TODAY Sports Images
