Rich Hill made life very easy for his Red Sox teammates playing behind him Saturday afternoon at Fenway Park.
That said, the middle game against the Tampa Bay Rays wasn’t a total breeze for Boston fielders.
Just ask Kiké Hernández, who manned center field in the Red Sox’s 5-1 win over their division rival. Hill worked with such a kicked-up pace during his brilliant seven-inning outing that it was a bit challenging to keep up with the veteran southpaw.
“It was a little bit uncomfortable on defense,” Hernández told reporters, per MLB.com. “I was just thinking the whole time, ‘These guys gotta be going crazy in the batter’s box.’ There’s no way you can get comfortable when a guy’s working that quick. I’ve never seen a game where there were so many timeouts called in the middle of the wind-up. It was fun to watch.”
Nick Pivetta will try to match Hill on Sunday when the Red Sox and the Rays wrap up their three-game series in Boston. NESN’s full coverage of the finale begins at 12:30 p.m. ET.
