Ross’s Strong Game Pushes Sox Out Of Last With 9-4 Win

After a bit of bad news before today’s game, the Red Sox pushed through with a very productive and fruitful day for the team. That piece of bad news was today’s scheduled starter in Clay Buchholz going on the DL with intestinal bleeding. However, the Red Sox persevered to beat the Braves 9-4 and coupled with a Blue Jays loss, moved out of last place in the AL East. In Buchholz’s place, it was Aaron Cook who got the call for Boston– making his first start since getting his leg gashed up in a loss to Baltimore earlier this year. He and Braves’ starter Mike Minor battled for the first few innings as the score was still 0-0 heading into the bottom of the fourth.

Leading off the bottom of the fourth, Dustin Pedroia and Will Middlebrooks worked walks to put the Red Sox in a good position to score. They would do just that as Cody Ross took advantage of an inside pitch and pulled over the Green Monster for a three run home run. The Red Sox weren’t done though, as Adrian Gonzalez followed up by hitting one of his own over the monster to give the Red Sox a 4-0 lead. However, the lead unraveled almost as quickly as it came to pass as Cook allowed singles by Jason Heyward and Andrelton Simmons to lead off the inning. Former Red Sox Eric Hinske delivered with a triple that rolled around in center field to score two runs. Hinske himself would score on a throwing blunder by Cook as he tried to nab Hinske too far off of third base.

After allowing to Braves to close in and make it a 4-3 game, the Red Sox got right back to business in the fifth inning. After Kelly Shoppach and Daniel Nava reached second and third with one out, Will Middlebrooks drove in a run with a sacrifice fly to left to make it 5-3. Then Cody Ross came in and promptly delivered with a two-run shot over the monster– his second home run of the game, and 11th of the season, to make it 7-3 in the fifth inning. Aaron Cook was taken out after the fifth and Matt Albers came in to eat up some innings in relief.

He got two outs to start the inning, but ran into trouble when Jason Heyward got ahold of a pitch and drove it to left-center for a home run to cut it to 7-4. The Red Sox scored again in the sixth and with a man on first and two outs in the seventh– Kevin Youkilis made potentially his last at bat as a Boston Red Sox. He didn’t let it got to waste as he drove a triple to right-center to score Gonzalez from first and make it 9-4 Red Sox. The bullpen held the lead and the Red Sox moved out of last– currently sitting 5 games out of first place and 1.5 out of third.