Red Sox 5, Giants 4: A Three Run Lead Turned Into a Three Run Fourth Inning, and Boston Completed the Sweep
Two in the first, Jonah Cox homered in the second, and it was three to nothing before Fenway had even settled into its seats. Then Matt Wilkinson walked out for the fourth, and thirteen minutes of Boston baseball later, the whole thing was gone. Fifty two and seventy eight, swept out of Fenway Park.
Three to nothing. On the road, at Fenway Park, against a team that had already beaten us twice in this series. I let myself enjoy that for about forty five minutes, which in this Giants season passes for reckless abandon.
Then the fourth inning arrived, and I remembered which team I follow.
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 8 | 0 |
| Boston | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | X | 5 | 11 | 2 |
Say the good part first, because it happened and it deserves to be said. San Francisco scored twice in the first inning, and Jonah Cox led off the second by putting one into the seats. Three to nothing, in Boston, before the Red Sox had even had a real look at anybody. For a team that has spent most of August getting shut down early, that's a genuinely nice way to start a Sunday.
Then the fourth inning happened, and it happened all at once. Nick Sogard had already taken Wilkinson deep in the second to make it 3-1. Ceddanne Rafaela singled him home in the third and it was 3-2, close enough to still feel fine about. And then in the fourth, Connor Wong doubled to tie it at three, Mickey Gasper doubled right behind him to put Boston ahead, and Wilkinson's day ended right there, four runs allowed on seven hits in three and two thirds innings. Jose Brubaker came in to clean it up and instead Rafaela singled him in too, an insurance run charged to the new guy before he had even found the rosin bag. Three runs, one inning, and a three run lead was a one run deficit before the seventh inning stretch.
| Pitcher | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matt Wilkinson, SF (L, 0-1) | 3.2 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 2 |
| Jose Brubaker, SF | 1.2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Sam Hentges, SF | 1.2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| T. Harris, SF | 1.0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
I want to say something nice about Sam Hentges, because I spent an entire column two nights ago saying something else about him. He came off that Fenway walkoff on Saturday, the wall scraping double, the crew chief review, all of it, and he came back out on Sunday and threw an inning and two thirds of nothing. No hits. No walks. Two strikeouts. That's exactly the outing this team needed from him and exactly the outing he didn't have twenty four hours earlier, and I'm not going to pretend both of those facts aren't true at the same time. T. Harris matched him with a clean ninth. The bullpen did its job on Sunday. It was the rotation that didn't.
Jake Bennett got the win for Boston the hard way, seven innings, seven hits, four runs, three earned, six strikeouts, hanging on through a game his own offense turned into a laugher in the fourth. Tanner Guerrero worked around a single in the eighth and Aroldis Chapman struck out the side in order for his twenty ninth save. San Francisco got a run back in the seventh and couldn't find another.
Fifty two and seventy eight. Twenty six games under .500. Twenty three and forty five on the road. Boston finishes their sweep of us having outscored the Giants by exactly the margin you'd expect from a team playing out a lost August against one that's still fighting for a wild card. Three games, three losses, and the version of this team that showed up for a game and a half on Sunday, the one that scored three runs in two innings against a good pitching staff, is the version I keep waiting to see for nine innings instead of four.
This is what a selloff looks like from the inside. We traded Luis Arraez, Heliot Ramos and Robbie Ray away at the deadline and kept the kids, and the kids are going to have days like this one, where a rookie fifth starter gets four runs pulled out of him in one bad inning against a team that's actually trying to win something. That isn't an excuse. It's just the honest math of where this roster is right now, and it's why the only thing worth watching every night is Bryce Eldridge, who's going to be doing this for a much better team than this one someday soon.
The season is in the hub, the roster is on the depth chart page, and the rest of it, all of it, is on the Giants page.
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