There are many was to earn a win in Major League Baseball. Wade Miley found one of the more unusual ones Wednesday afternoon in Oakland.
The Boston Red Sox left-hander allowed A’s batters to advance into scoring position in the first, second, third, fourth and sixth innings. He walked the first two batters of the game, allowed a leadoff triple two innings later and didn’t pick up his first strikeout until the game was more than halfway over.
But in the only column of the scoresheet that actually matters, Miley was perfect.
Miley did not allow a run in his 6 2/3 innings off work — easily the best outing of the season for a pitcher in serious need of a good break.
“I think you just stay with it,” Miley told reporters after the Red Sox’s 2-0 win, as aired on “Red Sox Final.” “Eventually, something clicks. The seven or eight warmups you get in between innings, you kind of play with it. I got a little more consistent with the fastball, and I was still able to mix it up off-speed. They were just hitting it into play at people, so it worked out.”
This season has been a grind for all five Red Sox starters, but it has been especially taxing on Miley, whom the team acquired over in an offseason trade with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The southpaw carried a 1-4 record and a staff-worst 6.91 ERA into Tuesday. In his four losses, that ERA ballooned to more than 10.
Yet against the A’s, who started their ace, Sonny Gray, it finally came together.
“He was outstanding,” manager John Farrell told reporters, as aired on “Red Sox Final.” “He was resilient. In the first three innings, they had a number of guys in scoring position with less than two outs — a leadoff triple, second and third with less than two outs — and he never gave in. He got some quick outs, we were able to get a couple of popouts in the infield, he gets a key strikeout in one situation. But after the third inning, he settled into a much better rhythm. He was working quick, he was starting to get his secondary pitches over for strikes.”
Miley’s outing also allowed Farrell to employ his ideal bullpen plan — a rarity this season. Junichi Tazawa recorded the final out of the seventh outing and worked a perfect eighth, and closer Koji Uehara worked around a two-out walk to close things out in the ninth.
“Taz comes in and does an outstanding job with the inning and a third, and Koji closes it out,” Farrell told reporters. “But you’ve got to go back to Wade Miley’s performance of (getting) into the seventh inning and just dodging some bullets along the way. He did an outstanding job for us.”
What Miley did Wednesday wasn’t exactly sustainable — rarely are opponents going to go 0-for-14 with runners in scoring position — but for a team desperately seeking stability from its starters, it at least was a step in the right direction.
“It’s going to help out a lot when you get a win like this,” Miley told reporters. “Even for the team — I mean, it’s our first series win in a while. So, you can build on that and go forward.”
Thumbnail photo via Eric Risberg/Associated Press
