New day, same old suck from the hometown team. But I will say this. They didn’t go quietly.
The Toronto Blue Jays got out to an early 4-0 lead and then held on to beat the Boston Red Sox 7-5 in front of 37,156 rain-soaked fans. I say that only because there was a one hour and 28 minute rain delay before the game.
It was funny too because the one storm cell that passed over Fenway seemed to linger as it put out some nice lightning and heavy thunder. Maybe this was Mother Nature’s way of saying, I’m not letting you start on time since y’all haven’t fired Bobby Valentine.
Valentine wasn’t the reason they lost though last night. It was the suck factor from Felix Doubront. But I’m not going to say anything else bad about him. For a better of the season, he was the best pitcher on the Red Sox starting staff. And things could be a lot worse for the team standings wise if it weren’t for him early on.
Doubront right now is going where he’s never gone before in the big leagues. After last night’s start, he’s now thrown 134.2 innings. The most he had before this was 25. The most he threw in the minors was back in 2008 when he threw 129.1. There’s a huge difference though between throwing that many innings in the minors and throwing that many in the majors.
You can tell he’s tired out there and now the Red Sox need to make a decision on whether to shut him down for the rest of the year. With nothing else to gain the season, they’d be best served shutting him down and letting him rest up for a bit so he can get ready for the dueling grind next year.
The bullpen was solid with the exception of Daniel Bard, who allowed his third home run in as many appearances since returning from the minor leagues. Clayton Mortensen struck out four over two innings while Chris Carpenter struck out one in his inning of work. Rich Hill needed just nine pitches (eight strikes) to get through his inning of work.
Mauro Gomez had a nice night on his 28th birthday. He came off the bench to hit a pinch-hit RBI single. He then added a two-run homer in the 9th. Dustin Pedroia also knocked in two runs with one of them coming on a solo home run.
At this point, it’s not even fun to watch this team anymore. Although, it is nice to see the younger guys getting a chance. They are, after all, the future for this team along with any free agent signings.
Just a quick note before we go. I am going to the NC State vs UConn Huskies football game today so the lineup post will probably be a little later than usual.
But with that, we’ll be back later with today’s lineups, batter/pitcher matchups and links from the day.
For more slices of Red Sox goodness, head over to the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, CSN New England, ESPN Boston, NESN, Providence Journal, RedSox.com and WEEI websites.
And if you must check out the enemy news, head over to the Toronto Star and Toronto Sun websites.
Follow Ian on Twitter @soxanddawgs. And be sure to like us on Facebook as well.
photo credit: getty images
