Wednesday's 8-4 loss against the Atlanta Braves served as the latest setback, and sweep, for the Boston Red Sox who have fallen in four consecutive games.
Red Sox pitcher Nick Pivetta, who tossed six innings while allowing three earned off five hits with five strikeouts, spoke with reporters following the game -- offering his reflection on the outing and the overall state of the team moving forward.
"I guess when you look on paper, it's a quality start but that's about it," Pivetta said, as seen on NESN's postgame coverage. "People expect perfection out of me in those situations. I expect perfection out of other people in those situations. It didn't go my way. I end up leaving a middle-middle heater at the end of the day to (Braves designated hitter Marcell) Ozuna, and he hit it over the fence, so I wasn't able to execute my pitch later to the next hitter."
Pivetta added: "As a whole, we need to start focusing on winning series and winning series right now. I think we need to go out, and compete and do what we did earlier in the season. The positive things that we did, hold onto those things and bring those things into this next stretch cause we gotta win series and that's just plain and simple what we have to do. ... I wanna continue to go out there and put quality starts up there and I know that's what I have to do."
Pivetta took home his ninth loss of the season following his six-inning effort. In his last five starts, the six-year veteran right-hander has gone 0-3 with a 6.23 ERA, allowing 18 runs off 35 hits (six home runs) in his last 26 innings pitched.
