Power Outage by Jared Carrabis
Sox manage one hit in 13-0 blowout


Well, that certainly wasn't how the Red Sox wanted to finish the month of April.

Since stringing together eleven straight victories, the Sox have now lost two of their last three games. The reason for that has been horrendous starting pitching. Although Matt Garza was nearly perfect on Thursday night, any offense whatsoever would have saved the series opener between Boston and Tampa Bay from being an embarrassment. The Sox entered their series opener at the Trop ranking fourth in the American League in ERA. After Beckett was handed his second shelling in as many starts, the Red Sox dropped to seventh best in the American League in ERA.

In Beckett's last two starts, he has given up 15 earned runs in 9.2 innings. Beckett started off hot, striking out seven in the first three innings (including striking out the side in the second). In the midst of striking out the side once again in the third inning, the right-hander fell apart by giving up four hits and allowing two walks. One of the four hits was 3-RBI double with the bases loaded by Evan Longoria, his eleventh of the season. Beckett's curveball was nearly unhittable, but his fastball was either missing the strike zone or getting hit hard.

"I think everything was up in the zone," Beckett said. "Every time guys hit balls hard, that was generally what it was."

The trend would only continue in the very next inning when Michel Hernandez tattooed his first career home run to deep left field on a 93 MPH fastball out of Beckett's hand and into the bleachers. The Rays upped their lead to 6-0 later in the inning on an RBI double by Carl Crawford. All while this was going on, the Red Sox had yet to record a hit, a walk or reach base on an error. Matt Garza was dealing and there was nothing the Red Sox offense could do about it.

Beckett couldn't make it out of the fifth inning and was given the hook after giving up an RBI single to Michel Hernandez. When the book finally closed on Beckett, the Sox "ace" had gone 4.2 innings, giving up seven earned runs on ten hits. He finished with eight strikeouts and walked three batters. Beckett faced 27 batters and needed 113 pitches to do so, 68 of those pitches went for strikes. When Beckett sat in the Red Sox' dugout, he watched his ERA climb from 6.00 to 7.22. This is obviously not the start that Red Sox Nation had anticipated for their top of the rotation guy.

Hunter Jones relieved Beckett, but would give up his first Major League run after serving up Evan Longoria's sixth home run of the season. After six innings had been completed, the Sox were looking at an 8-0 deficit. With a perfect game still intact in the top of the seventh, Jacoby Ellsbury led of the inning with a soft line drive that skipped past Garza on the mound. Shortstop Jason Bartlett attempted to throw the speedy Ellsbury out at first, but to no avail. The infield single broke up a string of eighteen consecutive Red Sox retired to start the game. The base hit by Ellsbury was the only hit the Red Sox mustered all night long and had he not legged out the infield single, Matt Garza very well could have been the first pitcher to ever throw a perfect game against the Red Sox.

"Two strikes, [Evan] Longoria was covering the line pretty good. I was just trying to get something on that side," Ellsbury said. "Not the prettiest of ways to do it, but I got it done."

Things went from bad to worse for the Red Sox who were already down by eight runs entering the bottom of the eighth inning. Taking the mound for the third straight night, Javier Lopez was running on fumes...and it showed. Lopez was knocked around the yard for five earned runs after allowing four hits and walking a batter in just a third of an inning.

With the game out of reach, manager Terry Francona made a move that more or less was an unofficial forfeit of the game. Francona brought in outfielder Jonathan Van Every from right field to pitch, saving the bullpen in a 13-0 game in which your offense only has one hit, and sent Lopez out to play right field. It was the first time a Red Sox pitcher had played a position since August of 1980.

"First of all, I don't like doing it," Francona said. "But I'm not going to let a pitcher get hurt. Javy had thrown three days in a row. I didn't want to embarrass anybody. Certainly, we didn't want to embarrass Javy. We're just not going to hurt somebody like that. We're already getting killed. It was a bad night."

In Van Every's first pitching appearance since his high school days, the left-hander finished the eighth inning without giving up an earned run. He did however give up one hit, a double to Michel Hernandez who had himself a night, going 4-for-5 with a HR and 3 RBI.

When the smoke finally cleared after Tampa Bay's offensive explosion, Matt Garza had dominated the Red Sox for 7.2 innings, giving up just the one hit to Ellsbury, while racking up ten strikeouts. Garza improved to 2-2 on the season, but most impressively, he moved to 4-1 lifetime in seven starts against a potent Red Sox team. So as the Red Sox put this game behind them, they begin to look forward to the rest of the series, which still has three more games remaining.

"We have to find a way to figure him out," said second baseman Dustin Pedroia. "He's been throwing the ball great against us. It's just one game, and we'll move on and get after it tomorrow."

Justin Masterson will get the ball in game two of this series, taking on Andy Sonnanstine. Masterson has been phenomenal for the Red Sox since being asked to fill in for the injured Daisuke Matsuzaka. In two starts, the right-hander has earned two victories. Masterson will be looking to go three-for-three on Friday night. The odds are certainly in the Red Sox' favor to do some damage against Sonnanstine who gave up seven runs on ten hits in his last start on Sunday against Oakland. Sonnanstine also carries a hefty 5.40 ERA against the Red Sox in his career and has not faired very well at Tropicana Field where he is 8-9 with a 5.13 ERA in 26 career starts. The Boston bats will be looking to rebound from a night off on Thursday by inflating Sonnanstine's numbers at the Trop.

Don't look now, but David Ortiz is still without a HR and it's May,
-Jared Carrabis

Final Score: Red Sox 0, Tampa Bay 13

Don't forget to vote for SoxSpace for Best Red Sox Blog and Best New England Sports Blog! All votes greatly appreciated, click HERE to vote!

Published on May 01, 2009

---

Tweet