Garrett Richards on Wednesday had another tough outing as the Boston Red Sox fell to the Toronto Blue Jays, 4-1, in the first game of a doubleheader.
Richards lasted four innings, allowing four runs on eight hits (including a pair of home runs) while walking one and striking out two. His performance brought his ERA up to 5.15, and that number rises to 6.39 in his five starts against the Blue Jays this season.
After the game, he offered a pretty generic response when asked about his start -- the only question he was asked in his postgame media availability.
"There's some good ones, there's some bad ones," he told reporters. "Right now I seem to just get beat hard on my mistakes, so just continuing to fine tune some stuff. I threw a lot of strikes today, had really good stuff, just couldn't keep any runs off the board."
Richards entered Wednesday's game off a pair of wins, with the most recent decision coming against Toronto on July 21. But even those didn't come easily, as he allowed four runs in his last outing against the Blue Jays and three in a win against the Philadelphia Phillies on July 9.
Speaking to reporters postgame, manager Alex Cora praised Richards for finding the strike zone, though he did acknowledge that "there's certain times we've got to put people away."
For now, Richards will slide into the back of the six-man rotation Boston has been going with since calling up Tanner Houck, who will get the start in the second game of the doubleheader Wednesday night.
