If the San Francisco Giants weren’t already regretting letting Andrew Bailey leave his post as pitching coach to take the same job with the Red Sox, they certainly felt his loss in Tuesday’s series opener at Fenway Park, when Cooper Criswell pitched like an ace and Logan Webb looked off from his first pitch.
On Star Wars night – the Sox are out of town on May (the) 4th – ‘The Force’ continued to be strong with Boston’s starting rotation and overall pitching staff, which held the Bay Area visitors to four hits and one walk in a 4-0 shutout.
For the second start in a row, Criswell pitched five shutout frames. The right-hander held the Giants to two hits, one walk, and striking out four. He was perfect through 3.1 innings and thanks to an impressive double play by Ceddanne Rafaela, faced the minimum through four. He didn’t give up a hit until the top of the fifth, when Michael Conforto led off with a single.
Fortunately for the Sox starter, Enmanuel Valdez, Rafaela, and newcomer Garrett Cooper promptly completed another double play, getting Patrick Bailey out and erasing Conforto.
“Any time you can go out and contribute, help the team win, obviously it feels good,” Criswell said. “Credit to the catchers, pitching coach, the whole staff, just buying into what Bailey’s put together for us. Just going out there and trusting the game plan and executing the best we can.”
With Bailey as their pitching coach for the last four seasons, the Giants boasted one of the best rotations in baseball. Now, it’s finally Boston’s turn to win an arms race.
Through their first 30 games, the 2023 Red Sox rotation posted a 6.01 ERA and .277 opponent average. Under Bailey, whom Sox pitchers have taken to like moths to a flame, Boston’s rotation owns a 2.00 ERA and .211 opponent average through their first 30 games. They’ve allowed two earned runs or fewer in 26 games, and made 13 shutout starts.
A key component is a level of starting pitching depth that has eluded the Sox for years. Despite pitching well in spring training, Criswell began the season in Triple-A when the Red Sox opted to go with a five-man rotation. But when Garrett Whitlock and Nick Pivetta landed on the injured list, Criswell was called up and has stepped up.
“Huge,” Alex Cora said of being able to replace injured starters with other starters instead of openers and bullpen games. “It’s hard to maintain, you know, your bullpen healthy and kind of like, in the green zone, right? It seems like last year, we were out of gas the whole second part of the season with all the openers and bullpen games and all that.”
“We’re in a better place roster-wise, more flexibiilty,” the manager continued. “It’s very hard to have to openers in a week and try to grind at this level. At one point, it’s not gonna work, so I’m glad that Coop was able to start.”
Webb, meanwhile lasted just 3.2 innings. The Sox knocked him around for four earned runs on nine hits, three walks, and four strikeouts.
Led by Jarren Duran, the Boston bats attacked the Giants starter early and unceasingly. The spark-plug leadoff man knocked three singles off the Giants starter, drove in a run, and scored. When he led off the bottom of the fourth with a single and stole second, he became the first Red Sox player to steal nine or more bases within their first 30 games of a season since Jacoby Ellsbury, who did so in 2013, ‘09, ‘08, and ‘07.
This is only the 20th time a Red Sox hitter has achieved the feat. It was an appropriate stat for the night, as Carl Yastrzemski had stolen 11 bases in his first 30 games of the 1970 campaign, and his grandson, Mike Yastrzemski, was batting eighth in the Giants’ lineup.
“Jarren did an outstanding job with (Webb),” Cora said. “He’s been struggling with changeups and sinkers and he got ’em up and hit it the other way.”
Wilyer Abreu again flirted with the cycle. The rookie standout drew a walk in his first at-bat, then doubled in the third, and whalloped his first career triple, which scored Duran, in the fourth. After striking out in the sixth, he singled in the eighth. It was his fourth game with at least three hits in his last nine; he’s recorded at least one RBI in eight of them.
“I think that was the baseball that I hit the hardest in my career,” Abreu said of the triple, a 114.4 mph scorcher (via translator Carlos Villoria Benitez).
Rob Refsnyder’s hot start continued. The veteran utility-man, who wasn’t originally supposed to be in the lineup, got Boston on the board immediately, scoring Duran with a two-out single. He repeated the feat in his next at-bat, bringing Abreu home from second with another single.
“Ref comes in today because (Masataka Yoshida) is banged up, and he goes the other way,” Cora added. “It was a good all-around game.”
Brennan Bernardino, Greg Weissert, Zack Kelly, and Justin Slaten pitched the rest of the way, and the Sox maintained their 4-0 lead. However, they forfeited valuable opportunities to turn the game into a blowout: they’d were 4-for-17 with men in scoring position and had stranded 13 runners, metrics that became momentarily stressful when Slaten gave up back-to-back one-out singles before shutting the Giants down.
The game was also not without a painfully familiar occurrence for Boston. Garrett Cooper looked solid at first base in his Red Sox debut until the bottom of the fifth, when Giants reliever Sean Hjelle hit him on the wrist. There was already visible swelling when Cora and a trainer examined him, and he exited with a “right-wrist contusion.”
“Just sore,” the manager updated after the game. “We dodged a bullet there.”
Bobby Dalbec replaced the newcomer as the pinch-runner and first baseman, and batting with one out in the bottom of the seventh, he, too, was hit by a pitch. The Red Sox breathed a sigh of relief when he took his base and promptly stole another, proving that they still had at least one healthy first baseman.
The Red Sox are 17-13 and despite their too-lengthy injured list, boast a solid offense and the best starting rotation in the game.
“It’s one month out of the season,” Cora said. “We still got a long ways.”
Still, as he said, “We’re playing good baseball,” he couldn’t help but smile.
