Upon first glance at the box score, the Boston Red Sox pitching staff put together a good day on the mound against the visiting Seattle Mariners.
Seattle, after all, recorded a mere three hits in 10 innings, and had just one base runner through five.
But when taking a deeper look you’ll see the Red Sox staff allowed seven combined walks, which the Mariners turned into four runs en route to a 7-3 victory at Fenway Park on Thursday.
It was met with some frustration by Red Sox manager Alex Cora after the extra-innings loss.
“How many walks we have?,” Cora phrased back to reporters during a postgame video conference. “I mean, it doesn’t matter (about hits) right? Two hits, three hits. When you walk seven guys you’re putting yourself in bad position. It’s not about getting hits, it’s about getting on base. That’s the name of the game and we walked seven guys.”
Cora went back to the point on a few occasions, including when answering a question about how left fielder Franchy Cordero played a two-out double in the sixth inning. That hit came after two walks by starter Nick Pivetta, who put together an impressive 5 2/3 innings prior to that sequence.
“He was playing where he was supposed to,” Cora said in response to Cordero. “So it’s not about the routes or where he was playing I think, for how good we pitched today, we didn’t pitch well. We walked too many guys. There was a lot of traffic at the end. We weren’t able to put them away.”
Darwinzon Hernandez came on for the 10th inning and walked two batters as the Mariners scored four runs in the frame to put the game away.
The 12-8 Red Sox look to bounce back Friday as they return to Fenway to host Seattle.
