Andrew Cashner was cruising Tuesday night until he wasn’t.
Cashner breezed through the first three innings against the Kansas City Royals, facing the minimum nine hitters in the early going at Fenway Park. But once the visitors finally got to the Boston Red Sox starter, they never stopped.
Jorge Soler opened the Royals’ scoring with a go-ahead, two-run homer in the fourth. Kansas City tacked on another in the fifth courtesy of a Ryan O’Hearn solo blast and extended their lead to three with one out in the sixth via a Hunter Dozier single. The wheels clearly were falling off for Cashner at this point, but manager Alex Cora elected to keep the right-hander in the ball game to face Soler.
Big mistake.
Soler launched his second home run of the game — another two-run shot — to swell Kansas City’s advantage to five. Boston never really flirted with a comeback, as it ultimately fell 6-2 in the middle contest of the three-game set.
So, why did Cora opt to leave Cashner in face Soler, who’d just logged his 30th home run of the season in the at-bat prior?
“I know he hit a home run in the previous at-bat but it was a matchup we liked,” Cora said, per MassLive. “He threw a slider for a ball, a hanging slider for a strike. We were thinking (Josh) Taylor for the lefty, two batters later. It just didn’t work out.”
This likely would have been an acceptable move last season, as Cora previously has noted the potential negative impact of “chasing” wins. But at this stage in the season, the Red Sox need to be proactive. While Boston doesn’t exactly feature a slew of sure-handed relievers in its bullpen, any fresh arm probably would have been a better option than Cashner at that point in the game. The Red Sox’s offense certainly didn’t help the cause, but the morale and mindset in the dugout could have been different had the gap been smaller.
Boston will look to close the series on a high note Wednesday night before it embarks on a four-game set against the Los Angeles Angels.
