Tigers 10, Red Sox 9: Javier Baez blasts Boston’s bullpen as it melts down again and again and again

Roman Anthony’s future teammates gave us all a reason to drink on his 21st birthday.

In a game that was both everything the Red Sox could be and everything they’re ultimately not, the evening’s events culminated in catastrophic calamity as the club who can’t close completely collapsed on consecutive choke jobs.

Specifically, Greg Weissert was handed the lead twice in extra innings, and both times he coughed it up. The crippling chaos canceled out both Carlos Narvaez’s go ahead hit in the tenth, and Kristian Campbell’s clutch home run to the opposite field in the 11th.

But somehow, that wasn’t the only blown save of the night for the Red Sox, because less than an hour earlier, Garrett Whitlock came into a game for the fourth time in his last five outings with a lead and failed to protect it.

On the flip side of all this improbability, Javier Baez came to the plate twice with two men on base, and despite only hitting two three-run home runs in the last two and half years, managed to launch a pair of them against this Red Sox bullpen tonight. He ended the evening with a WPA of 1.150, which nearly cracked the top ten of single game WPA performances in baseball history (he would have needed to reach 1.206 for that).

There were six home runs hit in this odyssey, each seemingly bigger than the last, and somehow all of them either tied the game or gave a team the lead. But not surprisingly, in a battle of bad bullpens, Boston ended up with the short end of the stick.

Tonight’s defeat leaves the Sox a pitiful 4-11 in one run games, and underscores an enormously problematic theme of the season: They don’t know how to win close games. Whether it’s the bullpen lighting late innings on fire, the offense going down like church mice when they need to scratch out a run, or Alex Cora pushing the wrong button, this team is almost surgical in their ability to do just enough to lose, and tonight was their magnum opus.

It’s not that everybody is failing top to bottom every night and the entire roster stinks, it’s that when you add up all the good and the bad on almost every game that’s close, they come up one play short. They’re lacking guys who can deliver a knock out punch to the opponent, and when they get what should be a knock out punch, like tonight with Kristian Campbell, another leak springs elsewhere. It’s maddening!

Even outside of the bullpen, there was plenty other things not to like: Jarren Duran got deked on a play in front of him, the manager made questionable calls, and the offense struck out 15 times and left ten men on base.

You know what else I don’t like? How good this bullpen is at saying the right thing after they blow games.

Between this, Garrett Whitlock’s comments the other day, and Justin Slaten’s informative breakdown after his disastrous outing in Toronto, this group leads the league in solid sound bytes following a loss. Perhaps they would be a little less comfortable giving these out if they weren’t in this situation so often.

Want some more good news? The Sox are slated to face Tarik Skubal and Chris Sale in the next two games.

Three Studs

David Hamilton: He had a pair of hits including this electric game tying homer in the eighth that was the longest of his career.

Kristian Campbell: Just one hit all night here, but it was the 11th inning home run that should have been the game winner.

Carlos Narvaez: He also had what should have been a game winning hit. His came in the tenth inning as part of a 3-5 night.

Three Duds

Greg Weissert: Duh! He blew it twice and ended up a with -.834 WPA.

Garrett Whitlock: Served up the other three-run home run to Baez that resulted in the other blown save.

But you know what? The gopher ball wasn’t even the worst sequence of his outing. That came the batter earlier when he was one strike away from getting out of the inning on five consecutive pitches. Facing Jace Jung, who came to the plate batting .093 on the season, Whitlock wilted while trying to find a pitch to put him away. He had exactly the guy at the dish he needed to complete a feel good bounce back outing, but he self destructed when he lost confidence in his fastball and couldn’t throw it for a strike.

After getting ahead 1-2 using only his off-speed pitches, Jung snuffed out Whitlock’s weakness and stayed off the fastball. Suddenly, Whitlock’s weapon of choice was stymied now that Jung was locking in on it. In response, Whitlock imploded trying to get something extra on his off-speed stuff, and hit Jung on the eighth pitch of the plate appearance. This allowed Baez to come to the plate like he was hunting a wounded animal, and he assailed the first off-speed pitch he saw in the zone. Disaster!

Even worse, this isn’t an isolated incident. Whitlock is playing himself right out of any high leverage innings, and there’s not any obvious answers when it comes to replacing his early season production.

Rafael Devers: Here’s how bad the bullpen was in this game: Devers went 0-6 with three strike outs and it’s almost a footnote.

Bonus Dud:

Trevor Story: He didn’t even play in this one, but he entered the night hitting .122 with a .350 OPS in his last 18 games, and that’s worth noting because in addition to the situational homers by David Hamilton and Kristian Campbell, Marcelo Mayer was doing this for Worcester in the ninth inning of their game:

So a bunch of other middle infielders were hitting clutch dingers tonight while Story rode the bench after major struggles at the plate the last three weeks. His job’s not in jeopardy quite yet, but it certainly felt like we moved one stop closer to that being the case tonight. Hopefully this lights a fire under him!

Play of the game

In a match up filled with big plays, tense moments, wild swings, and dramatic at bats, Javier Beaz’s second go-ahead three-run homer of the night is the exclamation point that towers over it all!