Wake up the bats
The first inning was the story of this one. After Brayan Bello kept the Dodgers off the board, the Red Sox had Dodgers starter Emmett Sheehan on the ropes. Sheehan couldn’t find the zone, and Red Sox hitters were all over his stuff. Sheehan threw 32 pitches in the first inning, but didn’t allow a run. The next inning, he threw six pitches and suddenly had new life in the game.
After the first inning, the Red Sox had five baserunners the rest of the night. They scored two runs in the third inning and had Alex Bregman on second base with nobody out, but couldn’t advance him past that. They even brought the tying run to the plate in the ninth inning, and again couldn’t get anything across the plate. There weren’t many opportunities for the big hit, and the few opportunities were squandered.
Brayan Bello wasn’t his best, but he gave the team a chance to win. A bases-loaded walk in the third inning was a low point, but he did well to fight through and complete 5 1⁄3 innings. While it wasn’t Bello’s sharpest outing, his ability to limit the big inning and give the team a chance is a huge improvement on previous seasons, when innings would spiral out of control.
A Teoscar Hernandez home run in the eighth inning was enough to put the game out of reach, as the Red Sox lost their third straight series opener.
Clayton Kershaw vs. Garrett Crochet tomorrow. The past versus the future.
Three Studs
Connor Wong
I know Wong was only 1-3, but he had his first extra-base hit of the season, hit the ball hard each time he came up, and threw a runner out stealing. In the context of this season, that’s as good a game as Wong has played, and worthy of the first stud in a losing effort.
Chris Murphy
Murphy replaced Brayan Bello in the sixth inning and wriggled his way out of a jam that was his own doing. In the sixth inning, he made Ohtani look as bad as Ohtani has ever looked. Outside of one outing, Murphy has been effective since returning from injury.
Alex Bregman
He had an RBI and made a few nice plays on defense. He’s the third stud in a relatively stud-less evening.
Three Duds
Jorge Alcala
As the leader of the Jorge Alcala fan club, this one hurts me. He came in with a runner on base in a one-run game and left a pitch over the plate that got put over the fence.
Ceddanne Rafaela
0-4 with an ugly diving play at second base. Let’s get Rafaela back to center field, where he belongs.
Trevor Story and Masataka Yoshida
They both struck out with multiple runners on base in the first inning. They had Sheehan on the ropes, but let him off the hook, which allowed him to get through five innings.