Red Sox @ Twins Game Thread/ 19th- 22nd June 2023

Chris Murphy comes alive in his new relief role for the Red Sox
By Peter Abraham Globe Staff,Updated June 18, 2023, 10:10 p.m.

Chris Murphy averaged 95.8 miles per hour on the first five fastballs he threw against the Yankees on Sunday, hitting 96.7 on a pitch to Giancarlo Stanton.

When he took a glance at the scoreboard during the first game of the doubleheader, the 25-year-old lefthander was surprised. Where did that come from?

With the Sox down two runs, Murphy pitched 2⅔ scoreless innings, striking out three and allowing one hit to keep the game under control. The Sox rallied for a 6-2 victory.

The rush of adrenaline from facing the Yankees at Fenway Park had something to do with Murphy’s better velocity. But pitching in relief has been the biggest driver.


Murphy has five appearances out of the bullpen — two in the majors — since June 1. He allowed two unearned runs on nine hits over 13 innings in those games with two walks and 17 strikeouts.

“Murph has been really good in that role since we started doing it in Triple A,” Sox manager Alex Cora said. “More efficient, throwing a lot of strikes, repeating his delivery. His fastball is a good one. It plays.”

Murphy was 1-3 with an 8.35 ERA in nine starts for Triple A Worcester, so the switch didn’t come as a shock.

“I’ve known from the start my opportunity was probably in the bullpen,” said Murphy, a sixth-round draft pick out of the University of San Diego in 2019. “I’ve had a walk issue in the past, I’m aware of that. I had a feeling this could happen at some point.”

Murphy retired the first seven Yankees he faced Sunday. He, Nick Pivetta, and Chris Martin combined on 6⅔ scoreless innings with seven strikeouts after opener Kaleb Ort gave up a two-run homer to Gleyber Torres in the first inning.

The Yankees are a much less potent lineup with Aaron Judge on the injured list. But it was still impressive.


For Murphy, making his Fenway debut was exciting. He was a fan of the Derek Jeter-era Yankees growing up in California because his parents are from Long Island.

Now he was pitching against his childhood team.

“My father loved Mickey Mantle,” Murphy said. “But I never rooted against the Sox. I liked watching Manny [Ramirez], David [Ortiz], and Pedro [Martinez]. To pitch with the crowd so loud and into the game was great.”

Murphy made his major league debut in Cleveland on June 7 and pitched 3⅓ scoreless innings, striking out five.

After the series ended, Cora asked Guardians first base coach Sandy Alomar Jr. for his opinion. The feedback was all positive. The Cleveland hitters thought his fastball was lively and he finished that pitch.

“He has a cutter, he has a slider, he has a curveball,” Cora said. “He’s been under control twice here with us. That’s something that we’ve been working with him, throwing more strikes.”

Murphy felt he was on the verge of improvement, regardless of his role. But the shorter stints have played to his strengths.

“Not changing much,” he said. “Just knowing that I’m not going super long. I don’t need to go six innings. Throwing as hard as I can, being on full-go from pitch one.”

That’s what has created the liveliness to his fastball.

“I wouldn’t say it’s easier; it’s still pitching at the end of the day,” Murphy said. “Just trusting my stuff. That’s been the message to me, knowing that I can do it at this level.”


Murphy has the confidence to use his breaking pitches behind in the count and challenge hitters with high fastballs.

“More conviction [and] better mechanics,” Cora said.

Now the bad news.

Murphy was eligible to play Sunday because he was appointed the extra player for the doubleheader, but he had to be returned to Worcester after the game.

Murphy was optioned back to the WooSox after his debut June 7 and must spend 15 days in the minors before being recalled. Barring another doubleheader, he’s not eligible to rejoin the team until Friday.

Whether it’s Friday or soon after, Murphy will get more opportunities. A lefthander with good velocity who can work multiple innings is a valuable piece, especially with the Sox averaging the sixth-fewest innings from their rotation in the majors.

“Whatever they need,” Murphy said. “That was fun.”

Paxton has been pitching well.  Hopefully, the offense doesn't go cold.

Let's keep the good times rolling.

The Red Sox have reentered a different conversation

By Rob Bradford
WEEI 93.7


Remember that feeling after the Red Sox lost a second straight game to the Rockies? Yup. Between the standings sink-hole they had seemingly stepped in and the uneasiness around the Matt Dermody drama, this was setting up for a long summer.

Monday Alex Cora and his team woke up in a different lot in life, one they seemingly hadn't been afforded since winning four straight in late May to go six games over .500.

After taking both games of a doubleheader against the Yankees at Fenway Park for the first time since 1976 - sweeping the teams' three-game series - the Sox now find themselves just two games out of the final Wild Card spot, And, more importantly, look the like the superior team to at least one of the clubs (the Aaron Judge-less Yankees) they are chasing.

The postgame notes laundry list of optimism after the nightcap's 4-1 victory should have highlight script-flipping:

- Have won each of their last four games, their longest winning streak since 5/16-20 (also 4 games)...Are 6-3 in their last 9 games and 9-8 since the start of June.

- Have outscored opponents 31-11 over their last 4 games, batting .338 (46-for-136) with 21 XBH and posting a 2.25 ERA (9 ER/36.0 IP) in that span.

- Relievers did not allow a run in 8.2 innings during today's doubleheader...They have allowed seven earned runs in 33.1 IP (1.89 ERA) over the Sox' last nine games.

- Starters have a 3.47 ERA in their 29 starts since 5/17 (56 ER/145.1 IP)...They have allowed two ER or fewer in 21 of those 29 games.

"They have a good team. They'll be there in the hunt and we want to be where they were last year,” Cora said. “Just the whole environment last weekend was good over there, and tonight, this doubleheader was great. So I think the kids are doing an amazing job the last two weekends. Now, we’ve just got to turn the page and be ready for tomorrow."

It's impossible to completely buy-in considering this roller coaster the Red Sox have been on since that early-May eight-game win streak. But it certainly does feel a bit different considering the recent evolution of some of their most important players.

Starter Brayan Bello, for instance, is emerging into the kind of pitcher Pedro Martinez told us was around the corner. He now has a 2.60 ERA in his last nine starts after going seven innings against the Yankees and surrendering just one run. There hasn't been one of those contests where Bello has allowed more than six hits or three runs. (It also doesn't help perception in these parts that the young righty boasts a 1.44 ERA in four career starts against the Yankees.)

But it's not just Bello.

Jarren Duran. Triston Casas. Justin Turner. Masa Yoshida. And even the shortstop we have been at least somewhat underrating, Pablo Reyes. They all played the part that the Red Sox desperately needed them to play over the weekend, both with the bats and the gloves.

This could take a turn. It certainly has before. That last time the Red Sox won four in a row they proceeded to drop four straight and weren't able to take more than two in a row until this current stretch.

And then there is the starting rotation conundrum, with the Sox seemingly without Tanner Houck for a good period due to his face fracture after being hit by a line-drive Friday night. That leaves Bello, James Paxton, Garrett Whitlock, and the unknown, with few viable options sitting down in Triple-A.

But the good news for the Red Sox is that they have legitimately re-entered the kind of conversation teams are starving for this time of year. They are, as we sit here, contenders.

Was it because the Yankees were so bad, or the Red Sox had suddenly found their way. This week in Minnesota and Chicago will go a long way to defining that reality. But it sure does feel different than about five days ago.

Sweeping the Yankees speaks well of Red Sox future, but what of their present?
The Red Sox head to Minnesota with those most volatile of compounds: Momentum and hope.



By Jon Couture
June 19, 2023 | 10:12 AM

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The plot thickens.

In this space on Friday morning, I wrote, “Even if they were to sweep New York this weekend, the standings and numbers wouldn’t look much better [for the Red Sox]. But they’d sure feel a lot better.”

Here we are.

Friday night’s 15-5 rout came with the frightening line drive off Tanner Houck’s cheek, the joy of an offensive breakout against their rivals gone in an instant. The news is good, but only relatively: The ball didn’t hit the young starter in the eye, but did break something, landing him on the injured list.

A significant issue given his place in the starters’ surge, but take your moment to enjoy Sunday first — 6-2 in the Saturday makeup, 4-1 in the nightcap. In back-to-back weekends, the Red Sox have won five of six from the Yankees, Boston’s measuring stick for generations regardless of the standings.

Brayan Bello didn’t just match his seven innings at Yankee Stadium last Sunday, he bettered them, fanning eight and getting 16 swings and misses with stuff showing more bite across the board. With runners in scoring position against him, New York went 0 for 10. That included half his eight strikeouts, and the only ball New York got out of the infield was Anthony Rizzo’s 403-foot fly that Jarren Duran basket caught by the bullpen, part of one of the team’s better defensive performances of the year.

“I know what is at stake [against the Yankees] and I know what the fans expect from us,” Bello told reporters. “For me to be able to pitch on that stage is huge.”

The schedule rarely allows a pitcher to face the Yankees in back-to-back starts, but it can be noted that the last Red Sox to submit such a run against New York was one already well associated with Bello: Pedro Martínez, who struck out 25 across two eight-inning starts in May 2001. Let your mind run wild with that.

It is the signature eight days of a young career, if not that of a baseball operations department who hasn’t developed a high-end starter in 15 years. Of course, the depth of New York’s slump is such that they were 0 for 14 against Nick Pivetta. Chris Martin closed them out twice. They had four hits in a bullpen game started by Kaleb Ort, for goodness sakes.

As Aaron Boone noted from a gloomy Yankees clubhouse, the story of their struggles without Aaron Judge — they’re 4-8 since he busted his toe at Dodger Stadium — is somewhat overblown. They’re a $280 million monster which still has Giancarlo Stanton, DJ LeMahieu, Rizzo, and Josh Donaldson in its lineup.

In order, they’re in slumps of 5 for 41, 15 for 90, 4 for 48, and 4 for 33. That’s a combined .132 from the majority of their two through five hitters. Like it couldn’t last in a more frugally built Red Sox lineup, it won’t last there, but that’s somebody else’s problem given Boston doesn’t see New York again until mid-August. (When they’ll probably again play on Sunday Night Baseball.)

The Red Sox instead head to Minnesota with those most volatile of compounds: Momentum and hope. Lest we forget we’re only 11 days removed from a listless, fightless team starting a “the Bible says homosexuality is a sin” journeyman in the middle of Pride month. Or, for that matter, that between these two Yankees series the Red Sox couldn’t solve Colorado, which spent this weekend getting clobbered in suburban Atlanta.

The Sox went lose three, win three, lose four, win three back in April. They won eight in a row and lost six of seven in May. Win four, lose four on the west coast. Eight losses in 11 before these four in a row. And now Houck, one of the starting pitchers who helped nose this rotation to among the league’s better ones since the middle of May — “if you pitch, you’re going to have a chance,” manager Alex Cora told reporters last week — is in a holding pattern pending possible surgery.

What was a 5.5-game gap behind the Yankees before these six games is now two. They picked up three games on the Blue Jays and Astros. No series sweep is ever nothing, no matter the competition.

But we can’t lose that in and of itself, the sweeps that came before it didn’t keep these Red Sox from where they are. Baltimore has also won six of nine. The Angels, seven of 10. They’ve got another hole in their rotation, and they’re still just No. 6 in a three-get-in American League wild card race.

Say what you will about playoff odds, but Fangraphs gives 10 other teams a better chance at October given the relative strength of the AL East, and Boston’s relative strength within it.

Having a good series isn’t the problem for the mediocre team, even one whose future looks a little bit brighter and solidified this morning. Having another one is.

It’s only taken 72 games of the 2023 season to make that a story we know all too well.

Pete Abraham
@peteabe
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1h
Red Sox doing infield and outfield drill at Target Field.