Nathan Eovaldi very much was available to pitch Tuesday night, but in a potentially nuclear situation, Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora stayed away from him.
In the eighth inning of the Red Sox’s eventual 5-4 win at Tropicana Field, Brandon Workman tossed a 1-2-3 inning, using just 12 pitches. That prompted Cora to stick with arguably his best reliever in the ninth, but things began to unravel.
Tasked with protecting a 5-2 lead, Workman worked Ji-Man Choi into a 2-2 count with two down and runners on first and second, but Choi grounded a ball through short, beating the shift to plate a run to pull Tampa within two. Workman remained in, but after walking Travis d’Arnaud to load the bases, Cora made a change.
Instead of handing the ball to Eovaldi, who is being looked upon as a potential savior for the bullpen, or Heath Hembree, arguably Boston’s best reliever at escaping jams, he went to Marcus Walden. Make no mistake, Walden has been mostly sharp this year, but it nevertheless was a somewhat perplexing decision.
Walden proceeded to walk Tommy Pham to bring in a run, cutting the advantage to one. However, he wiggled out of the mess, getting Austin Meadows to ground out to first to end the game.
So why not Eovaldi?
“I’m not going to bring him in the ninth inning there when Work threw the ball so well in the eighth,” Cora said, via MassLive. “… Pham against (Walden) is something that we’ve been doing the whole season,” Cora said. “So we like that matchup.”
Entering Tuesday, Pham was 0-for-5 with a strikeout against Walden, and 0-for-1 with a strikeout against Eovaldi. Regardless, it all worked out fine in the end for the Red Sox, even if there was a bit of a scare along the way.
