To quote Tom Caron's after Boston's uplifting victory Wednesday afternoon "The Red Sox needed this one."
The Red Sox had gone 6 and 9 through their last 15 games and had lost each of their last 4 series. Since August 5th, they had gone 5 and 7 on the road and their pitching was stalling. Whats worse, last night's starter: Felix Dubront came into the night having thrown just 8 innings through his last two starts and allowing 9 earned runs.
Things did not look good but in the blink of an eye, that all changed.
After kicking off their offensive game with a double in the 1st inning the Sox fell in frame number one leaving Jacoby Ellsbury standing at second. Felix Dubront would then work his way around a lead off single with a nifty run down situation between Stephan Drew and David Ortiz boxing in Giant batter: Andrew Torres to clear the base-paths and snag the first out of the inning. He got out of the 1st with the game still waiting for its first run.
Now by the end of inning number two this one still looked close. After Will Middlebrooks drove in 2 tallies with a 2 out 2 run homer to left field, the Giants returned in the bottom of the second and quikely cut Boston's lead to just 1 run with a long ball of their own. But for the Giants that's about where their good fortune ended.
Felix Dubront would dominate for the better part of the night, ripping down the next 8 batters he faced following the San Francisco home run.
"I spent the last four days working on throwing the ball down in the zone," Doubront said. "I was able to do that and go with my stuff. I was working fast to get the hitters to swing at my pitch."
John Farrell soon backed him up: "once you get settled into the flow of the game he [Dubront] is great...we gave him a lead, he used all his pitches and he was able to carry his rhythm through the 8th inning"
But while Dubront was dominant in holding the Giants down, a huge part of at lest the first 6 runs Boston scored was the deficiencies in San Fransisco's starter: Barry Zito. Once a back to back all star, the slow pitching Zito was not helping the Giants in any way. Zito pitched just 3 and 2 thirds innings, and never broke 90 miles per hour with a single one of his 85 pitches. At first it seemed that Sox hitters were off-put by the lack of movement in Zito's fastball but nevertheless, that didn't last long. Riding RBI's by Johnny Gomes, Shane Victorino, and Dustin Pedroia, the Sox raked up 6 runs against Zito, effectively putting the game out of reach for San Francisco before they even notched their 4th at bat.
Middlebrooks was also happy with his performance. "I was surprised," Middlebrooks said. "He went fastball away and I thought he would stay away. He left a slider up in the zone and I put a good swing on it." he said when asked about his home run.
The Red Sox would tack on 6 more runs before all was said and done. A big part of those 6 runs was a 3 run bomb by Stephan Drew in the 7th inning. With runners on 1st and 2nd, Drew got ahead of an early pitch driving it out to right field and belting his 10th homer of the year.
"On the heels of last night it was good to come out with the day game and get a win like this." John Farrell said.
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