A Numbers game: Shane Victorino seals 11th inning victory for Red Sox - Boston wins 4-2 over Toronto

All season long, the Boston Red Sox have been accumulating nearly unfathomable numbers. Wins: now up to 72. Losses: still holding firm at a minimal 49. Walk-offs: a league leading 11 but most importantly, they have comebacks. 28 of them in fact.

Fact is, so many different facets of last night’s game made you cringe, smile or hang your head in disgust. A case could be made that even though it was devoid of a walk-off, last night's 4-2 11 inning win over the Jays was one of Boston's best of the year.

It began early on as with his team going down with little fanfare to kick off the night, starter Ryan Demptster came to the hill ready to start his 24 game of the year. Almost immediately, Dempster shined hurling an easy 1-2-3 1st inning, thus breaking a recent trend of bad first innings by the Red Sox. Yet sadly for the Canadian born Sox starter, his offence would give him absolutely ZERO  run support for a good part of the game as despite Dempter's dominance the Sox managed just 4 base runners through 5 innings, at least temporarily squandering a dominant 4 hit 7 inning performance by Dempter.

But no matter how little help he was getting from his hitters, Dempster was selfless and continued his devotion for the better part of the night. Yet sadly whatever it was that was keeping him going at least temporarily ran out in the bottom of the 5th inning as a Brett Lawrie double with 1 out eventually shot the Sox in the feet because by the time they got out of the inning, they were losing...once again.

"We continue to grind, continue to be relentless at the plate, provide or build opportunities." Manager John Farrell said post-game on his team’s resilience. 

Like Farrell said, the Sox DID fight back as after Shane Victorino used his mega arm to gun down Jose Reyes at home, the Sox came to bat in the top of the 7th inning ready to go. The Jays moved to their 3rd pitcher of the night following a lead-off strikeout to Jarrod Saltalamaccia and would soon pay for that decision. Pitcher Sergio Santos got off just 1 pitch before Sox 3rd basemen: Will Middlebrooks drilled a 4 seam fastball deep into right field to hand the Sox a 1 out double. 2 pitches after the Middlebrooks double, the Sox finally cashed in on the relentlessness that their manager spoke up when speedy lead-off man Jacoby Ellsbury smacked a left field single to tie the game at 1.  

Boston would add another run in the 7th when Dustin Pedroia scored Ellbury who had stolen 2nd then moved to 3rd on a ground out. At that point they led 2-1. 

But like he has shown all season long, John Farrall was eager to not allow his starter's pitch count to get too high as after just 88 pitches so with his team on top he went to the bullpen putting in Junichi Tazawa in an attempt to hold onto the lead and earn Dempter just his 15th decision in 25 games. Long story short, things didn't really work out that way. 

“Felt like the power was a better match-up against J.P.[Arencibia], who handles off-speed stuff very well.” Farrell said explaining his thought process in taking Demptster out of the game.   

Fact is, Tazwa would cost Dempter the win as after the count was worked to 3 and 1, Arencibia crushed the 92 mile per hour fastball over the center field wall to tie the game at 2. From then on though, the Sox bull pen locked down as the combination of Breslow, Tazawa and Uehara led the Sox to the top of the 11th inning still tied at 2. 

But while there was no scoreing in those few frames there was no lack of story. With Koji Uehara coming into the game to record the final out of the 10th inning, he was making his 55 appearance of the year thus triggering a 4.5 million dollar vesting option for next year. 

"I'm looking forward to [seeing] you guys next year," Uehara quipped to the media after the game. "I feel that all the teammates, staff members, have been taking care of me. I think that has absolutely contributed to my good performance." 

Since being named the Sox closer after Andrew Bailey and Joel Hanrahan collapsed in their performance, Koji has statistically be the best closer in baseball, a thrilling stat made even better by his illustrious win last night.   

Nevertheless, he did get some help in the 4 outs he registered, but not before Shane Victorino broke up the tie game in the top of the 11th inning. Aaron Loup came into the game for the Jays as he hoped to get his team through the frame with the game still tied. He would start the inning by getting Stephan Drew to fly out but would proceed to walk Saltilamaccia before allowing a duo of base hits that, with a ground out mixed in between, would bring left fielder Shane Victorino to the plate with a chance to in essence, win the game. Ellsbury stole 2nd to eliminate the force play and on the very next pitch, Victorino drove him in with a single to deep center field. 

"I'm just trying to put the ball in play," Victorino said about the hit. "Once I got down two strikes I was trying to get a ball I could handle. Fortunately I got a ball out over the middle of the plate and was able to put it through to center field and get the two ribbies."

But the game was not done so back to defense we went. On the 5th pitch of the 11th, Rajai Davis lined the middle fastball alongside into the first base fowl ground. Forgetting about his 0-5 day at the plate, first basemen: Mike Napoli raced towards the seats and slid to make the grab for the first out of the 11th. 

"Napoli, he put together a heck of a game defensively at first, even though some opportunities alluded him at the plate," said Farrell. "Clearly, he contributed big time on the defensive side." Farrell said basically ignoring the fact that Napoli had a bad day at the plate before he acknowledged it later on. "With Mike, you're going to take the good and the bad with this streaky type of offensive player, that's who he is. And he's been a major contributor to this team all year."

The Red Sox would drop the next to batters in order getting out of the game and securing a win.

They hit no walk-offs, and in truth it wasn't really a golden game on the part of the Red Sox. These are the Toronto Blue Jays...they are NOT a good team, but in the end the Sox got the result they wanted. They added numbers to all their stunning statistical categories but in perhaps their biggest addition of all, the number 1 meant far more than the 28 that represents the number of comebacks this season or the 72 that represents their wins on the season. The Red Sox got 1 win on 1 day and no matter how hard it was they scored more runs than Toronto did. Simple as that.