BOSTON — Baseball bores some and is too slow for others. The game must adapt for a generation growing up with no attention spans, people who protest a sport with such scant action. Beauty still lies in its unpredictability. The allure of baseball arrives each afternoon, when a ballpark gate opens and no guarantees are promised. There is no clock, no ability to kneel it down or dribble out. Go to a baseball game, stay long enough and expect something never seen before.
Beneath a chilly Boston night, with wind swirling east to west, a circus commenced. The Astros and Red Sox tussled for three hours and 47 minutes, manufacturing a game unlike any other in the first three months of this six-month slog. They alternated leads and made maddening defensive mistakes due to the galing wind. Their shortcomings showed on full display, but the power in their lineups allowed both clubs to create a battle befitting this new age of fan.
“It was a tremendous change of emotions about eight times,” Baker said. “We’re cheering one moment and kind of lamenting the next moment. That was a weird ballgame. The whole game was very strange. It’s hard to explain.”
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Boston won 12-8 after a borderline stupid sixth inning. The Astros dropped two fly balls. A quirky infield fly rule negated one of them. Boston batted 10 men, scored five times but struck just two hits. Four runs were unearned. Reliever Enoli Paredes walked two men and hit another. Between batters, a half-naked fan ran out of the right-field seats toward him. A group of Fenway Park security guards tackled the man before he made contact with any Astros player.
Paredes has now walked or hit 18 of the 53 batters he’s faced. He left Thursday’s game with a shoulder injury, but even at full health, the erratic righthander should not pitch in any high-leverage spots. Baker had no choice. His supposed stud starting pitcher collapsed, creating a mess for the terrible bullpen behind him.
Zack Greinke is paid like an ace but pales in comparison. Aces can carry a team and mask their deficiencies. Every five days, Greinke alternates the ability to accomplish either. His enigmatic season took another strange turn on Wednesday with a dud few could see coming. Greinke gave the Astros a three-inning start, his shortest start since May 5, 2014.
“A little surprised it didn’t go very good,” Greinke said. “Stuff wasn’t super sharp today, I think that was probably the biggest issue. Command was OK, but not really good. I made some good pitches that were called balls and then came too much into the (strike) zone afterwards.”
Five days ago, Greinke finished a complete game against the Toronto Blue Jays, cementing his place atop the American League in innings pitched. Greinke awoke on Thursday with a 2.37 ERA across his last five starts. He finished seven innings in all but one of them, holding opponents to a .522 OPS.
Boston battered Greinke like no other lineup this season. Baker yanked him after only 64 pitches, refusing to let the Red Sox pound him any further. Boston put 14 balls in play against Greinke that averaged a 96.6 mph exit velocity. Greinke yielded six batted balls struck 98.5 mph or harder. Five of them fell for hits.
“Were you watching the game?” Baker said when asked why he pulled Greinke so early. “You didn’t see those rockets that were being hit? We were trying to keep the game where it was. Zack wasn’t sharp. He wasn't fooling anybody ... you can read if Zack is on pretty quickly. We tried to stick with him as long as we could.”
Greinke collected nine outs. The Red Sox struck seven hits. Greinke finished a perfect first inning on only 13 pitches, producing the only highlight of his horrendous evening. He threw 51 during the next two frames. Boston seemed to be ahead in every count. Greinke, in his own words, “does not like to walk people.” Instead, he throws hittable pitches inside the strike zone.
“Sometimes when you go in the zone, you get outs still,” Greinke said. “Today, it seemed like a lot of times when I came in the zone, it got hit hard, no matter what pitch it was.”
Greinke forced the Astros’ bullpen to record 18 outs. Asking for even half that is lunacy, especially after long man Cristian Javier threw four innings in Wednesday’s win. The Astros offense gave their relievers eight runs of support, but no amount feels like enough.
Kyle Tucker demolished a three-run triple in the fifth that put Houston up 7-4. Brandon Bielak yielded a three-run home run to Christian Arroyo in the home-half that gave away the advantage. Jose Altuve put a ball onto the Green Monster in the sixth to supply a lead. The bullpen blew it again.
Bielak covered two innings before Blake Taylor, Paredes and Brooks Raley teamed to work the sixth. Kiké Hernandez hit a double down the left-field line on the third pitch Taylor threw. He scooted to third on Alex Verdugo’s groundout and appeared ready to tag up on J.D. Martinez’s lazy fly ball to right field. Martinez begrudgingly ran down the first-base line, clearly frustrated at getting under the ball.
Tucker camped under the pop up. His arm could challenge Hernandez at home plate. The baseball did not travel far into the outfield. Tucker stuck his glove up. The ball glanced off of it and onto the grass. Hernandez headed home as the tying run. Martinez remained at first base instead of the dugout where he belonged.
“He barreled it and hit it real high,” said Tucker, who was charged with an error. “As it started coming down, it started fading back toward the infield and just clanked off my glove.”
Taylor and Paredes teamed to walk three of the eight batters they faced. After Tucker’s error, Taylor allowed Xander Bogaerts aboard on four pitches, bringing the lefthanded hitting Rafael Devers up in a matchup Taylor should crave. The southpaw delivered a fastball over home plate. Devers popped it up into the gusting wind.
Carlos Correa ran out into shallow center field. He dropped the baseball as it dropped into his glove. Second-base umpire John Tumpane signaled for an infield fly, ruling Devers out. Major league rules state “the umpire is to rule whether the ball could ordinarily have been handled by an infielder-not by some arbitrary limitation such as the grass, or the base lines."
Devers appeared dazed. Manager Alex Cora did not argue much. Tumpane’s judgement could not be reviewed. Baker came from the dugout to once again call into his battered bullpen. Paredes ran in. The circus continued.
“They were hitting me hard today,” Greinke said. “It wasn’t getting better either. Game was close. I kind of think, more than anything, it was seeing something new and hopefully the next person looks better and does a better job than I was doing. Today it didn’t work out that way.”
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