Xander Bogaerts sees the Red Sox waste his incredible hitting display.
Sunday saw the New York Yankees complete a three-game sweep of the visiting Boston Red Sox, as a run-scoring clinic was put on. The two players that stole the night were the Yankees’ Aaron Judge and Xander Bogaerts. Judge hit two home runs, recording five RBI, and Bogaerts went 4-for-4 from the plate and recording two homers of his own in the process.
Now, nobody can say that a sweep here was an unexpected result because, well, it wasn’t. The Red Sox pitching staff has struggled ridiculously through this first part of the season and we were going into this series with Ryan Weber, Zack Godley, and Austin Brice pitching. A completely different story to the rotation the Sox were rolling with last season. That caliber of pitching just isn’t going to get the job done, particularly against a Yankee side with so much firepower in the middle of the lineup.
The disappointing thing from this series was how Bogaerts’ individual performance went to waste on Sunday night. In a very back and forth game, Bogaerts’ heroics looked as though they were going to be enough to get the Red Sox a win and keep at least a bit of the momentum from those two wins at Citi Field alive.
Xander homered to right-center in the first, which put the Sox up 2-0. This was never going to be enough as we saw Matt Hall come in for Brice and give up five earned runs in just the two innings pitched. Bogey kept the Sox in it though, adding an RBI single in the third before going deep again, this time to left-center in the fifth. He lead-off the eighth inning with a double, but the Sox weren’t able to do anything with this.
The fact that Bogey was so hot last night and the fact that Rafael Devers finally got his first home run of the season makes this loss all the more painful. It was the most exciting prospect this Red Sox fanbase has seen since the Opening Day thrashing of the Baltimore Orioles, and it just goes to waste because of how thin the pitching staff truly is. Yes, it’s against the Yankees and yes, Aaron Judge is on that Yankee team, but this game was such a winnable one.
The Sox lead 7-6 going into the Yankees half of the eighth and this is where the final damage from a pitching standpoint was done. Matt Barnes came into pitch, and I don’t think any Sox fans were confident about this one. He’s been solid in recent years, but his reliability at the mound has taken such a hit over the past year.
After getting two quick outs on Gary Sanchez, and Gio Urshela, Barnes somehow managed to walk the Yankees ninth man in Mike Tauchman, allowing DJ LeMahieu and Judge to step up to the plate and put the nail in the coffin for the Sox in this series, allowing such an entertaining display from the Sox’s absolute star player in Bogaerts to go to waste.
I think this game really does show where we’re at this year. Everybody knew it was going to be a tough one to watch, and that’s okay. It’s a rebuilding year and that was always going to be the case whether it was 162-games or 60.
Bogaerts can have nights like that, Devers can have nights like that, anyone can have a night like that and it still won’t matter when you haven’t even got a complete rotation and hardly any reliable arms coming in from the bullpen. So, for now, we’re just going to have to enjoy Bogaerts and be thankful that he has already been locked up for the next six years.