The Boston Red Sox earned a shutout victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday afternoon at Fenway Park thanks to a stellar outing from David Price.
Boston did, however, suffer a bit of scare in the injury department when Andrew Benintendi fouled a ball hard off his right foot in the third inning.
Benintendi limped around while being tended to by Alex Cora and the Red Sox’s medical staff, but decided to stay in the game after looking like he was in quite a bit of pain. Later in the at-bat, the left fielder smacked a double and hobbled into second base. He would exit the game after the extra-base hit and was replaced by Blake Swihart in left field.
Cora spoke about the injury after the win, but didn’t seem too concerned about the left fielder when giving the injury update.
“Day to day. He’s sore,” Cora said when asked how Benintendi was feeling on NESN’s post-game coverage. “That was a good shot. Seems like he’s been getting that every other day. We’ll see how he feels tomorrow. X-rays were negative, so you never know how they wake up and all of a sudden they feel great. But as of now we’ll probably stay away from him tomorrow.”
As Cora said, Benintendi has been the victim of multiple hard foul balls this season, but put the blame on himself postgame, while also downplaying the injury.
“I’ve got nobody else to blame but myself,” Benintendi said with a smile. “I’m pulling off or something. Definitely been some bad luck. I’ll wear some protective gear and hopefully it gets better.”
Despite getting back in the batter’s box and hitting a double, the left fielder said it didn’t feel very good running to second base.
“It didn’t feel good,” Benintendi said. “Once I got to second the pain kind of came back. It feels a little better now and we’ll see how it feels tomorrow.”
As for a timetable, Benintendi isn’t worried about this being a serious injury.
“I don’t see this being anything super serious. Like I said, we’ll see how feels and we’ll go from there.”
Here are some other notes from Sunday’s Red Sox-Orioles game:
— David Price was stellar in his third start of the year Sunday afternoon.
The Red Sox’s starter went seven strong innings, giving up just three hits and no runs to go along with seven strikeouts and zero walks. He had tremendous command from the first inning on.
It was just the third quality start for Red Sox pitchers on the season, with Chris Sale (April 2 vs. Oakland Athletics) and Eduardo Rodriguez (Friday vs. the Orioles) being the other two.
— Price also was very happy with Tiger Woods’ Masters victory, sending his congratulations to the golfer after his 15th career major win, while also giving his thoughts on the Red Sox’s uniform choices.
“Good job, Tiger,” Price said. “We (the Red Sox) messed up by not wearing red today. I’m happy he pulled that off.”
— Xander Bogaerts gave the Red Sox a 4-0 lead with a three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning and spoke postgame about sticking to his plan as a hitter.
“Just going up there with a plan and sticking to your plan,” Bogaerts said on NESN’s broadcast. “I was looking off-speed the whole at-bat. After he threw me the first slider I was like, ‘Damn I might strike out’, because his first slider was nasty. … That last one he just left it in the middle. I’m happy I didn’t foul it off because I definitely would’ve been in the dugout.”
— The Red Sox, now 6-10, wrap up their four-game series with the Orioles Monday morning at 11:05 a.m. ET. Hector Velazquez will get his second start of the year for Boston.
