With the solid contact, the Boston Red Sox made at times Monday against the Toronto Blue Jays, it felt like the Sox were about to break out of their early-season offensive funk.
But squaring up the baseball didn’t produce the intended results for the Red Sox as their offensive woes continued in a 6-2 loss to the Blue Jays at the Rogers Center.
Boston, who had seven hits in the defeat, failed to score more than four runs for the eighth straight game and hasn’t crossed that threshold in 13 of their 17 contests this year. Despite the continued lack of production from the Red Sox, outfielder Alex Verdugo feels the offense is close to turning a corner.
“We’re just kind of running into some tough luck,” Verdugo said as seen on NESN postgame coverage. “We’re hitting the ball hard, it’s going right at people and it seems like there’s really no holes at the moment.”
Verdugo added: “We’re scuffling at the moment, but like I said, I feel like a lot of us are putting up good at-bats, hitting the ball hard, but we’re kind of chasing results right now.”
Verdugo won’t get any argument from Red Sox bench coach Will Venable, who is still filling in for Alex Cora. Venable liked what he saw from Boston’s offense, which has only scored in two out of the last 18 innings, as the Red Sox manufactured two runs in the top of the eighth off of an RBI single from Kiké Hernández and a sacrifice fly from Verdugo.
“You go back and look at that game tonight, it was a lot of good stuff,” Venable said as seen on NESN postgame coverage. “We hit the ball hard all over the place. We did a great job laying off some breaking balls. We talked about getting opposing pitchers in the zone, we did that tonight and we didn’t miss pitches. We just him them at guys, they made good plays and just sometimes that’s how it goes.”
Verdugo and Venable do have some evidence to back up their claim. The Red Sox tattooed some balls, but it proved to be only warning track power and in some cases terrific defense by the Blue Jays. Kevin Plawecki was robbed of an extra-base hit due to a phenomenal diving grab from Toronto center fielder George Springer.
Boston’s been particularly aggressive at the plate this year as going into the contest with the Blue Jays the Red Sox were last in the major leagues in seeing 3.7 pitches per plate appearance, according to the Boston Herald’s Jason Mastrodonato.
Verdugo doesn’t have too many qualms about Boston’s approach at the plate and believes it’s only a matter of time until the Red Sox offense returns to the form expected out of it.
“I think we have a good idea of what we want up there and I think we might be chasing a little bit more than what we should be,” Verdugo said. “We probably got to get just a little bit more selective on certain pitches that we want. I think the biggest thing is quality of at-bats, how hard you’re hitting the ball, did you stick to your game plan and did you hit the pitch that you wanted.
“I feel like a lot of guys are happy with that result and obviously we’re not happy with losing, but we know it is a 162-game season and right now we’re less than 20 games into it. At some point in the middle of this year, a 10-game stretch, a 20-game stretch really doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. We’re still staying positive, keep going forward and pitchers are doing what they got to do and the offense, we’re going to step up and help out.”
Here are some other notes from Red Sox-Blue Jays:
— Nathan Eovaldi dazzled as he was the first starting pitcher for the Red Sox to work his way into the seventh inning this season. Eovaldi ended up pitching seven innings, allowing five hits and only two runs off of solo homers. He also struck out five and walked none.
“He was great,” Venable said. “He was amazing. In total control. That’s what we expect out of Nate.”
— Eovaldi was at 72 pitches after seven innings, but Venable didn’t have him return to the mound for the eighth. Venable instead went with Matt Strahm, who allowed two out of the three batters he faced to reach base. Venable then brought in Tyler Danish, who served up a grand slam blast to Bo Bichette, which ultimately proved to be the difference in the game.
“The way we were looking at it is we weren’t going to have (Eovaldi) face the top of the order again,” Venable said. “… We kind of highlighted that spot (for Strahm) going in. Nate gave us everything we needed tonight and regardless of pitch count, it was just a really good spot for Strahm there.”
— J.D. Martinez returned to the lineup after missing the last four games due to left adductor tightness. Martinez doubled in his first at-bat but finished 1-for-4 with two strikeouts.
— The Red Sox look to bounce back in the second game of a four-game set with the Blue Jays on Tuesday. First pitch is scheduled for 7:07 p.m. ET and you can watch coverage of the game on NESN.
