Red Sox beat the Rain and the O’s

Patriot’s Day is one of the great New England holidays that brings us the Boston Marathon. While thousands of runners put everything they had into 26.2 miles, I along with 37,000 other Red Sox faithful saw the Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles 7-1 in a rain shortened day.

Not even the weather could rain on the Red sox parade today, with the team clicking on all levels.

Justin Masterson was fantastic today, pitching 5 innings of one run ball. While he did walk 3 batters, he also struck out six and seemed to get back on track after a rough start the last time out. His strong performance was backed up by an even better performance by the Red Sox hitters.

The Red Sox collected only five hits in the game but were able to capitalize on three Orioles errors. In the first, Mookie Betts started off the game with a single. He then stole second and advanced to third on a throwing error. Two batters later, David Ortiz hit a sacrifice fly to right field tying the game up at 1-1. Most of the damage was done in the third inning where the Red Sox scored 4 runs, highlighted by a RBI double by Dustin Pedroia and a single by Shane Victorino that thanks to an error and fan interference, drove in two more runs.

The umpires kept the game going as long as they could and only allowed the Red Sox to do more damage. Finally, they brought out the tarp in the middle of the 7th for a rain delay. A few hours later they called the game.

Game Notes

• The bullpen looked solid today, with strong innings from Junichi Tazawa and Robbie Ross Jr.
• While the Sox were playing, Etiopian Lelisa Desisa won the Mens Marathon with a time of 2 hours 19 minutes and 17 seconds. Kenyan Caroline Rotich won the Women’s marathon in dramatic fashion, winning a race to the finish line that gave her a final time of 2 hours 24 minutes and 55 seconds; Only four seconds separated her from the second place finisher
• Hanley Ramirez was pulled after the first inning but the team reports that it was just an illness.
• The Red Sox now hold sole possession of the AL East and have either won, or tied every series they have played in this year.

It was hard to not give Masterson an A or A+ for this game but he only lasted five innings and did walk three batters. However, considering how rough his last start was this is a welcome sight for Red Sox fans and hopefully he can continue to find success as the season continues.

While there were only two innings for the relievers to appear in, Tazawa and Ross combines only allowed one hit and struck out one batter. They had a hefty lead coming into the game but were able to keep a potent Orioles offense from getting back into it.

While the box score might look great with a 7-1 victory, the Red Sox were able to capitalize on a lot of mistakes made by the Orioles. Wie-Yin Chen walked 5 batters, including a walk to load the bases that set up a Victorino single that brought two guys home. The team still stranded 7 batters and only walked away with 5 hits. In the end, it didn’t matter though because they got it done any way possible.

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