End Of An Error by Jared Carrabis
Sox streak comes to a halt after defensive miscues


As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. On Tuesday night, the Red Sox watched their eleven-game win streak come to a crashing halt.

The Red Sox held leads of 5-1, 7-3 and 8-7, but a rough outing by Brad Penny and some shaky defense were just the right combination to finally defeat the hottest team in baseball. Though the streak was finally halted at eleven games, the Red Sox offense still managed to spray 14 hits, while playing eight runs. If you're going to go down, you might as well go down swinging, and the Sox did just that.

Starting things off early in the top of the first, JD Drew singled in Dustin Pedroia for a two-out RBI after hooking a ball into right field. The Indians retaliated with a run of their own in the bottom half off of Brad Penny.

The Sox looked to distance themselves from the Tribe in the second inning by stringing together four hits, a walk and a sacrifice fly. With one out, Jason Varitek took a six-pitch walk to put a man on for Julio Lugo. Lugo, making his first Major League start since injuring himself way back on June 11, 2008 against Baltimore, singled on a line drive to the opposite field, advancing Varitek to third. The Boston shortstop was 2-for-3 in his return with a walk.

After a Jacoby Ellsbury sacrifice fly scored Varitek from third, Dustin Pedroia did not let the Indians' strategy of pitching him outside affect his production. Cleveland starter, Anthony Reyes, kept pitching Pedroia outside, so instead of trying to pull the outside pitches, Pedroia instead went with the pitch and drove it on a line into right field, advancing Lugo to third.

Keeping the line moving, David Ortiz ripped his seventh double of the season into right field on a 76 MPH changeup to drive in Julio Lugo with the third Boston run in his back pocket. The contagious hitting continued when Kevin Youkilis ripped a double down the left field line to drive in both Pedroia and Ortiz. The double for Youkilis was his eighth on the season and his RBI's number 14 and 15 gave Boston a 5-1 advantage.

While the Sox bats were cookin', Brady Penny continued to struggle mightily on the mound allowing base runner after base runner. Penny coughed up another two runs in the second to inch the Tribe closer to Boston's lead, making it 5-3, Sox. Fearing that a two-run lead wasn't nearly enough this early in the game, the Sox tacked on two more runs in the third after an RBI double by Jason Varitek, his fourth of the season, drove in Jason Bay (2-for-3, 2 BB), who singed to start the inning. The Sox added another run later in the inning when Jacoby Ellsbury grounded out to the right side of the infield, allowing Mike Lowell to come in from the back door and score.

With a healthy 7-3 lead, Brad Penny did what he had been doing best all night, giving back runs. Without a scoreless inning turned in by either starter up to this point, Penny continued the trend thanks to some poor defense behind him and his inability to fire his pitches where the captain held his mitt. With one out and a man on first and second, Mark DeRosa hit a grounder to Kevin Youkilis who threw a strike to Julio Lugo at short to start what should have been an inning-ending double play. Lugo dropped the toss from Youkilis, allowing Shin-Soo Choo to score. So, instead of a double play to get out of the inning, the Red Sox got no outs and the Indians got a run back.

With two men still remaining on base with one out, Penny fired a 95 MPH two-seam fastball to Ben Francisco and to say that the Indians' left fielder "got all of that one" would be an understatement. The three-run blast for Francisco vaporized the Red Sox' once four-run cushion. Penny would face one more batter before giving up a base hit to Grady Sizemore, and miserably, that would be the night for the right-hander.

When the smoked had finally cleared, Penny had tossed 2.2 innings, giving up seven runs, but only four were earned. Penny walked three, only struck out one and gave up the one home run to Francisco. The right-hander watched his ERA jump to 8.66 on his walk back to the Red Sox dugout. In his 2.2 innings of work, Penny hurled 89 pitched (46 for strikes) against 21 batters faced. Neither starter would make it out of the third inning; Reyes didn't even record an out in the third.

A battle of the bullpens ensued, as the Red Sox first threw Hunter Jones at the Tribe for 2.1 innings of scoreless baseball. Jones has been a pleasant surprise for the Sox' pen. In his three appearances on the season, Jones has tossed four innings of shutout baseball having given up just one hit in the Majors. That hit came on Tuesday, but Jones struck out two and remained untouched as a Major Leaguer.

Hideki Okajima turned in a scoreless inning of his own, as he continued to put his Friday night disaster against the Yankees behind him. The Red Sox were able to scrap together a run on an RBI single to right field by Julio Lugo, who drove in Jason Bay. The Boston left fielder was on base four times on Tuesday. But as the theme had been all night, as soon as the Red Sox got the lead, the sooner they gave it back. Takashi Saito was charged with his first blown save in a Red Sox uniform after hurling a 93 MPH fastball that Mark DeRosa quickly turned into a souvenir to tie the score up at eight.

The two team's bullpens guided their offenses into the bottom of the ninth, still tied at eight. The hero of a couple innings prior, Mark DeRosa, began the bottom of the ninth with a single off of Red Sox reliever, Javier Lopez. After going deep for a three-run shot in the third, Ben Francisco sacrificed his booming bat by bunting DeRosa over to second to get into scoring position. With one out and DeRosa just 180 feet away from home, Asdrubal Cabrera hit a groundball to Kevin Youkilis that the first baseman fielded cleanly, before flipping to his pitcher covering the first base bag.

Lopez bobbled the throw from Youkilis, as Red Sox Nation watched the ball, as well as our win streak, plummet to the ground. "It's a play I make, every pitcher makes, probably millions or at least thousands of times in a career," Lopez said. "It was a heck of a play by Youk to get the ball there." The error by Lopez allowed DeRosa to come all the way around to score, as the Red Sox eleven-game win streak snapped before their very eyes.

Although this game ended on the Red Sox' third error of the evening, Lopez is certainly not the one to blame for the loss. "We didn't lose the game on that play," Youkilis said, referring to the error made by Lopez. The Red Sox committed three errors behind their pitchers on Tuesday night, including Lugo's error that would have ended the third inning, ultimately preventing a three-run homer hit by Ben Fransico later in the frame. Brad Penny also should shoulder some of the blame for letting lead after lead slip away under his watch.

"He didn't throw enough strikes," Francona said of Penny. "A lot of his fastballs were elevated, and again, we gave them some extra outs too, right in the middle of all that, which doesn't help. He just threw balls in the middle of the plate," Francona explained. "Again, I thought the ball flew out of his hand pretty well."

Even though the Sox' offense had 14 hits and 11 runs crossing home plate, 11 runners were still stranded on base. Boston had plenty of opportunities to score more than the eight runs that they had; they were 6-for-17 with runners in scoring position. But enough about trying to figure out who was to blame for this one loss. Despite the loss, the Red Sox are still the hottest team in baseball with eleven wins in their last twelve games and it took the Indians' last at bat to put the Sox away by just one lonely run. Is this loss the end of the world? Far from it. The Red Sox will shake this one off and continue to play great baseball to cap off a very streaky first month of baseball.

"We'll just come back out tomorrow," Lopez said. "It [will] be nice to get another one going again."

On the hill in the rubber-match of this series for Boston will be Jon Lester. Lester's last outing came against the Yankees on Friday in which he earned a no decision before Kevin Youkilis sent the Fenway Faithful home happy in the bottom of the eleventh. Lester tossed 114 pitches against the Yankees in his last start over six innings, giving up two runs on seven hits. In his career, Lester is 2-0 with a 4.03 ERA against Cleveland, with one of those starts being when he earned a victory in his first return to the mound since winning his battle with cancer.

Opposing Lester will be Fausto Carmona. Sox fans probably remember Carmona most vividly for serving up JD Drew's grand slam in Game 6 of the 2007 ALCS, or when he coughed up a walk-off home run to David Ortiz to dead-center field in 2006. Regardless of your memories about Fausto, he's 1-4 against the Sox including two blown saves from when he was a closer.

-Jared Carrabis

Final Score: Red Sox 8, Indians 9

Published on April 29, 2009

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