The Boston Red Sox lost to the Baltimore Orioles 2-1 in the 10th inning, spoiling one of the Sox’s best starts of the season.
Red Sox ace Nathan Eovaldi threw seven shutout innings in Baltimore on Saturday night. The right-hander allowed just three hits and struck out eight.
“He was amazing,” Alex Cora said, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “…He threw the ball well and he made pitches. Like I said before the game, today was a big day. We were very short (on bullpen arms).”
Eovaldi had a no-hitter going into the sixth inning, and has strung together a few really strong performances in a row.
“I felt really good out there,” Eovaldi said, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “I had a really good feel for the splitter and then just really commanding the ball, all over the zone. Had a good feel for the slider early on. Towards the end of the game I left one over to (Orioles first baseman) Ryan Mountcastle and into (Orioles outfielder) Austin Hayes. They just kind of spun in the middle but I was able to go out there and have a shut-down inning in the seventh and that was a big one for me.”
Eovaldi has allowed just three runs over his last 18 2/3 innings (three starts), and feels like his clean mechanics are leading to his high-level play as of late.
“Going back toward the Toronto start I worked a lot in-between on my mechanics and I felt like I finally kind of figured out what I needed to and that helped me command the fastball, and then again the splitter too,” Eovaldi said. “Tonight I had a good feel for the splitter and when I had that pitch working for the righties it makes it a lot more difficult for those guys to react to it and helps the slider off that as well.”
Here are some more notes from Red Sox-Orioles:
— The Red Sox offense continued to be lackluster against a last-place team.
“I’m not going to lie, we need to swing the bats,” Cora said. “We had a horrible month. In April we didn’t do our job. We can talk about, it’s early and all that stuff but we got to put together better at-bats and that’s the bottom line. It seems like we get going and we stop, right? All the sudden you look up and it’s the seventh, eighth inning and it’s a close game.”
— Cora is also aware of the poor pitch selection from the offense, as is everyone watching at home.
“Obviously, everybody knows we’re swinging a lot and we’re swinging at a lot of bad pitches,” Cora said. “We’re chasing and we have to do better.”
— The Red Sox attempt to win the three-game series against the Orioles on Sunday at Camden Yards. First pitch is scheduled for 1:05 p.m. ET following an hour of pregame coverage, and you can watch it all on NESN.
