Bullpen? No bullpen.
Game five – Ortiz and the bullpen, right? Not exactly. Because it’s a misnomer to call that relief pitching the bullpen, when half the relief innings were pitched by starters, not relievers. If they come out of the bullpen to enter the field of play, but are really starters, what is that? Bullpen? No bullpen. Who knows?
What we do know is that the Sox pitching staff went for eight shutout innings. After Pedro sat down, having surrendered four runs, the relievers pitched the equivalent of a shutout. And this one night after they had gone six innings without surrendering a run. Fourteen shutout innings spread over two consecutive nights.
But on closer inspection there was even more. There was a perfect tenth pitched by Arroyo, who had only gotten through two innings a couple nights earlier in game three. And then in the eleventh, Myers and Embree combined to strike out the side. Myers working again on Matsui, who had homered off him in game three, and then drew a four pitch walk in game four. But this night, it took Myers only four pitches to retire Matsui, who never made contact. Embree gave up a single, but followed that with two Ks. Five strikeouts in two innings. Then Wakefield came out of the bullpen and in his three innings, tossed four more strikeouts. So in the final five innings of this game, the Sox relievers recorded nine strikeouts. After Clark’s ground rule double in the ninth, the only time the Yankees threatened was in the thirteenth, courtesy of three passed balls.
Finally after almost six hours of baseball, after more than fifteen hours of play in Fenway stretched over the three nights, Ortiz hit that broken bat single into shallow center, giving Joe Buck the chance to finish off another long night with another great call: “Damon running to the plate, and he can keep on running to New York.”
Looking back, especially through the disappointment of 2005, the year of no bullpen, or almost no bullpen, this pitching performance seems like a distant dream. This past year, when almost no lead was big enough to let us relax and just enjoy the game, any game, except perhaps those two 17-1 blowouts of the Yankees, the best we dared hope for was a single scoreless inning from Timlin. Just one shutout inning was enough to give us heart. Fourteen? Forget about it.
What we do know is that the Sox pitching staff went for eight shutout innings. After Pedro sat down, having surrendered four runs, the relievers pitched the equivalent of a shutout. And this one night after they had gone six innings without surrendering a run. Fourteen shutout innings spread over two consecutive nights.
But on closer inspection there was even more. There was a perfect tenth pitched by Arroyo, who had only gotten through two innings a couple nights earlier in game three. And then in the eleventh, Myers and Embree combined to strike out the side. Myers working again on Matsui, who had homered off him in game three, and then drew a four pitch walk in game four. But this night, it took Myers only four pitches to retire Matsui, who never made contact. Embree gave up a single, but followed that with two Ks. Five strikeouts in two innings. Then Wakefield came out of the bullpen and in his three innings, tossed four more strikeouts. So in the final five innings of this game, the Sox relievers recorded nine strikeouts. After Clark’s ground rule double in the ninth, the only time the Yankees threatened was in the thirteenth, courtesy of three passed balls.
Finally after almost six hours of baseball, after more than fifteen hours of play in Fenway stretched over the three nights, Ortiz hit that broken bat single into shallow center, giving Joe Buck the chance to finish off another long night with another great call: “Damon running to the plate, and he can keep on running to New York.”
Looking back, especially through the disappointment of 2005, the year of no bullpen, or almost no bullpen, this pitching performance seems like a distant dream. This past year, when almost no lead was big enough to let us relax and just enjoy the game, any game, except perhaps those two 17-1 blowouts of the Yankees, the best we dared hope for was a single scoreless inning from Timlin. Just one shutout inning was enough to give us heart. Fourteen? Forget about it.
posted by pops | 7:39 PM
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