It wasn’t a good night for the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on Saturday night.
First, they lost 3-1 to the Tampa Bay Rays in the completion of the suspended game from Friday night. Then in the second game, the Rays got four first innings runs against Clay Buchholz and held off the Red Sox for a 6-5 win in front of 37,022 fans at a cold, wet Fens.
With the two losses, it’s now three straight losses for the Red Sox as they fall to 4-7. The Rays move to 8-3 and into a first place tie with the New York Yankees.
In the grand scheme of things, Buchholz wasn’t all that bad. It could have been a totally different game for him had Mike Cameron not dropped a routine fly ball in the 1st that allowed Carlos Peña to reach and Evan Longoria to score. After that, Buchholz appeared to lose his focus as he walked B.J. Upton and then gave up a bases clearing double to Pat Burrell.
He settled down after that as he only gave up a double and walk in his final four innings of work. All in all, Buchholz went five innings, allowing four runs (all unearned) on three hits and four walks with seven strikeouts.
Scott Atchison allowed two runs (one earned) on two hits with two strikeouts over two innings of work while Ramon Ramirez struck out two in his two innings of work.
The Red Sox did have three home runs in the game as Marco Scutaro, Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis all went deep. Both Pedroia’s and Youk’s home runs were of the two-run varitey while Scutaro’s was a solo blast.
Pedroia had two hits as did Scutaro, Victor Martinez and Mike Lowell.
Scutaro’s home run in the 5th got the Red Sox on the board but a John Jaso ground rule RBI double in the 6th and Longoria bomb in the 7th pushed the Rays lead to 6-1.
Both Pedroia and Youk had their two-run blasts in the 7th to cut the Rays lead to one but they couldn’t push anything across in the 8th and 9th against Dan Wheeler and Rafael Soriano, who picked up saves in both games.
Jon Lester will look to get the Red Sox back in the win column as he’ll square off against Matt Garza. The game is scheduled to start at 1:35 p.m. and will be shown in the Red Sox television market on NESN. It will also be available to the rest of the country on TBS.
Tampa Bay Rays @ Boston Red Sox 4.16.10 (suspended game) box score
