Red Sox @ Orioles Game Thread/ 29th April - 1 May 2022

Boston Red Sox should keep Garrett Whitlock in the bullpen, and Saturday’s implosion showed us why | Chris Cotillo
Updated: Apr. 30, 2022, 11:38 p.m. | Published: Apr. 30, 2022, 11:36 p.m.

By Chris Cotillo | ccotillo@MassLive.com

BALTIMORE -- Saturday night showed why the Red Sox can’t afford to put Garrett Whitlock in their rotation, at least right now.

Yes, Whitlock has been dominant in his first two major league starts, allowing one unearned run and recording nine strikeouts in seven innings against Tampa Bay and Toronto. But removing him from the bullpen mix leaves a short relief corps even shorter, as we saw late Saturday at Camden Yards.
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The Red Sox love talking about “perfect pockets” for their relievers in games, and the eighth inning Saturday night presented one for Whitlock. The only problem? He was unavailable because he threw 61 pitches in his start Thursday and is slated to start again Wednesday against the Angels.

With the Red Sox leading, 1-0, after Nate Eovaldi dominated the Orioles for seven innings, manager Alex Cora called upon the untrustworthy Matt Barnes for the eighth. Barnes recorded two quick outs, then Cedric Mullins hit a bloop single to put the tying run in scoring position. One batter later, Anthony Santander tied things up with a single through the right side.

In a perfect world, it would have been Whitlock, not Barnes in that role. If Whitlock was still in the super-reliever role he started the season in, he probably would have pitched the eighth and the ninth. But the recent rotation re-shuffling, caused at least in part by Tanner Houck being unvaccinated and missing the Toronto series, made that impossible. So Cora, with many of his top relievers down, had to turn to Barnes, then Ryan Brasier and Hirokazu Sawamura in the ninth and 10th.

Cora, to his credit, didn’t lament that he couldn’t use Whitlock late in the game. He chalked Barnes’ performance up to bad luck, and Brasier, who has had a rough start to the season, did pitch a 1-2-3 ninth against the middle of Baltimore’s order. The Red Sox lost not on a pitch Sawamura threw, but rather an airmailed throw to third base on a sacrifice bunt attempt.

“At the end of the day, it’s not one guy... Our pitching staff is doing a great job,” Cora said. “An outstanding job. We don’t depend on one guy. Everybody has to do their job and they’re throwing the ball well.”

The Red Sox entered 2022 short on bullpen arms and still are, even if there have been encouraging performances from Hansel Robles, Matt Strahm and others. Barnes still can’t be trusted, Jake Diekman has had his ups-and-downs, and it seems like guys like Brasier, Sawamura and Kutter Crawford are barely holding on to their roster spots. With Whitlock in the mix, Cora at least had one lockdown option. Now, he’s spinning the roulette wheel on a nightly basis.

Houck, who for now will remain in the bullpen after losing his rotation spot because he was ineligible to pitch in Toronto, is the wild card in all of this. In a perfect world, he’d slide into Whitlock’s old role and become the multi-inning fireman the Red Sox need. Boston has three off days in an 11-day stretch beginning Monday, so theoretically, they could get a few outings out of both Whitlock and Houck in the bullpen for the next couple weeks. But locking Whitlock into even one more start severely limits Cora’s options in relief in the short-term.

Long-term, Whitlock profiles as a starter and likely will be a really good one at the major league level. But right now, the Red Sox’ bullpen can’t afford to lose him. We all saw why Saturday night.

After lukewarm April, Sox eager to turn page
1:35 AM ADT

Byron Kerr


BALTIMORE – Saturday night’s frustrating one-run loss was a microcosm of a stumbling opening month for the Red Sox. All manager Alex Cora wants to do now is turn the page.

The Orioles endured seven shutdown frames from Red Sox ace Nathan Eovaldi at Camden Yards, eked out a run to tie the game in the eighth and won it in the 10th, 2-1, on a throwing error by reliever Hirokazu Sawamura that scored pinch-runner Jorge Mateo.

Boston finished April 9-13, wasting another impressive seven-inning effort from Eovaldi, its No. 1 starter, and now needs to figure out what’s going on with the club’s cold bats as a new month arrives.

That lack of run support and sustained rallies has put a damper on Boston's recent solid starting pitching. In the past 15 games, the starters have posted a 2.32 ERA over 73 2/3 innings, a marked improvement from the beginning of the season, when they allowed a 6.07 ERA during the first seven games.

"The bottom line is we've got to swing the bats,” Cora said. “We had a horrible month in April. We didn't do our job. We can talk about 'it's early' and all that stuff, but we've got to put [together] better at-bats. That's the bottom line."

One thing that would really help is to get J.D. Martinez back in the starting lineup. The Red Sox slugger was scratched again Saturday with an adductor strain. He hopes to return for Sunday’s series finale. The club's resident hitting guru spoke postgame about what he thinks is troubling the offense.

"I think the shortened spring has something to do with it,” Martinez said. “I don't think a lot of guys got to tweak [their swings]. During Spring Training, you always see guys tweaking. I feel like you want to struggle in spring because that's when you get to try out everything and kind of see if it works. If ... [you] kind of rush through it, come season, pressure's on and now it's game time and it's time to go. Guys are trying to see what's going to work now, and it's tough."

Eovaldi overwhelmed the Orioles, continuing a recent trend for Red Sox starters. In back-to-back starts, he has allowed two total earned runs over 14 innings. But the offense just could not get enough sustained rallies going to score more than once.

"It's a little surprising, but it's not like we are going down looking up there,” Eovaldi said. “I feel like they are having good at-bats, they are hitting the ball hard, it's just going right to guys. I know it's a grind right now. I feel like we are putting a lot more pressure on ourselves than we need to. I feel like we are throwing the ball really well as a team. It's just a matter of time before those hits start dropping in."


Averaging 96-98 mph with his four-seam fastball, Eovaldi mixed in his splitter, slider and curveball to keep Baltimore off the board for seven frames. But the offense has produced two or fewer runs in five of its past eight games. That has affected the bottom line. Boston has now lost eight of its past 11 games and boasts an unenviable MLB-leading six one-run losses.

Eovaldi struck out the side in the first inning. The Orioles' only baserunner in the first five frames reached courtesy of a throwing error by Xander Bogaerts in the second. Eovaldi struck out a season-high eight and walked none.

"I felt really good out there,” Eovaldi said. “I had a real good feel for the splitter, and then just really commanding the ball all over the zone. I had a real good feel for the slider early on. Toward the end of the game, I left the one [pitch] over to [Ryan] Mountcastle and to [Austin] Hays, and they just spun up there in the middle, but I was able to go out there and have a shutdown inning in the seventh, and that was a big one for me."

After Eovaldi exited, Anthony Santander’s RBI single off Matt Barnes tied the game in the eighth.

Trevor Story’s ground-rule double on the game’s first pitch set the stage for a Bogaerts RBI single that scored Boston’s only run. The Red Sox had seven hits on the night, but Story’s double was the lone extra-base hit, and the offense left 10 men on base.

RED SOX NOTEBOOK
JD Martinez scratched from Red Sox lineup
By Tara Sullivan Globe Columnist,Updated April 30, 2022, 6:50 p.m.

BALTIMORE — With their offense sputtering, the Red Sox sorely miss designated hitter JD Martinez. And after Saturday night’s extra-inning, 2-1 walk-off loss to the Orioles, Martinez made it clear how much he is missing being out there with his teammates too.

Scratched from Saturday’s lineup with lingering soreness in his groin muscle, Martinez remains hopeful he can start the series final Sunday, but even that feels unnatural, coming as it does just before an off day Monday. As Martinez put it, “I got to get out there every day and continue to ride it out.”

Manager Alex Cora made it clear he didn’t consider the scratch a setback, having written Martinez into the lineup on the assumption he would be ready to start, and then removing him after consulting with the player. Martinez has now missed seven of the team’s last 10 games, and Saturday’s loss dropped the Sox record to 9-13.

“Yeah. This sucks,” Martinez said.. “I tell them every day we got to figure out a way to get me out there and keep me out there. It just sucks. I tried to come back, felt good in Toronto and then boom, right away. Right when I was feeling good at home against Toronto, same thing. It sucks to see the guys struggle and me not being able to help them. I’m trying everything off the field, telling them everything I see from a swing standpoint. But it all comes down to execution.”

Much as Cora wants Martinez back, he conceded to an abundance of caution so early in the season. The hope he had Saturday will bloom again Sunday.

“I just put him in the lineup until he tells me not to,” Cora said before the game. “He went out there, he’s still feeling it so we went with Plan B. He’ll be available today, the goal is most likely he’ll be starting tomorrow, then Monday we have off and then he’s getting ready for Tuesday.


“If this was September he’ll be out there, but we’ve got to be smart with him. We don’t like setbacks and the fact that he felt he could go but he’s feeling it, you just got to be smart about it.”

Cora said there was no regret about not putting Martinez on IL despite how much this has lingered. “No, he should be OK,” he said.
Christian Arroyo says his calf is fine

The original lineup had Martinez (batting .278 with one home run) DHing and batting fourth. The updated one had left fielder Alex Verdugo moving up from fifth to bat fourth and inserted Christian Arroyo into the DH spot for the second straight game. Arroyo had been slated for a night off, and though replays showed him slowing up with a sore left calf muscle on a ground out in his final at-bat, Arroyo said after the game it was nothing serious and didn’t anticipate it being a lingering issue.
Nick Pivetta not in time

Struggling righthander Nick Pivetta is back on the mound for the series finale Sunday, looking to break out of his dismal 0-3, 8.27 ERA start to the season. In four starts, Pivetta has pitched 16 ⅓ innings, with 13 walks and 19 hits.

“He grinded in Toronto but the velocity, you saw at the end he got to 96, he’s just got to keep building on that,” Cora said. “He found a few things in the one start against the Jays at Fenway, mechanic wise, that he feels like mechanic wise he’s been off the whole time. He felt better, so now just go out and compete and hopefully the mechanic part of it, making adjustments, is in the past and now he can go out and throw a lot of strikes.

“His timing has been off. He has good extension, regardless of velocity, it’s been his fastball placement. He’s been late getting to where he wants to be timing wise as far as landing, but it feels like the last one and a half outings have been solid and he feels like he’s getting close.”
Jaylin Davis happy to see coach Pete Fatse

Newly added outfielder Jaylin Davis has crossed paths with plenty of Red Sox, given his past time spent in the AL in Minnesota. But he is particularly happy to reunite with hitting coach Pete Fatse, with whom he shared a great relationship with the Twins.

“Definitely, I loved Fatse and working with him when I was over with the Twins, me and him still talked a lot in the offseason,” Davis said. “Just the familiarity and we work well together. I can go to him and work quick. It’s nice.”
Infield hits

The Red Sox are in the midst of playing 13 consecutive games against AL East opponents, but after this road trip ends Sunday, only five of their next 50 are in the division … Garrett Whitlock will start again on Wednesday against Anaheim with the same plan of using the bullpen in early relief of him. Beyond that, however, Cora wouldn’t commit. “Let’s see how he goes, we have the off day Monday, another off day a week Monday, he’ll start Wednesday and we’ll go from there making decisions.” … The Red Sox were 9-12 going into Saturday night’s game. Last season, the Braves were 9-12 through their first 21 games before going on to win the World Serie. …According to Baseball Savant, the Sox went into the night with three hitters at the top of the AL in hard-hit balls: Rafael Devers (1st, 42), Bogaerts (T-7th, 31), and Verdugo (T-13th, 29) … Red Sox top prospect Marcelo Mayer, out since April 23 for what had been described as workload management in his first full pro season, has developed minor right wrist soreness that will sideline him for an additional few days, according to Red Sox farm director Brian Abraham. The 19-year-old, selected with the No. 4 overall pick in the 2021 draft, had been scheduled to return to the Single A Salem lineup this weekend.


Alex Speier of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.