The Red Sox win again on Mother’s Day
First off let me wish all of you amazing moms out there a Happy Mother’s Day, none of us would be here without ya! Now, back to baseball. It wasn’t easy and sure wasn’t as fun as last night but the Red Sox have once again defeated the Baltimore Orioles to win the series at Camden Yards. This is becoming a bit of a trend in the last few years. Not so much beating the O’s but walking away from Mother’s Day with another tally in the win column.
One man that loves playing baseball for the moms is Rafael Devers and he’s been a beast on the holiday since getting called up. Raffy Big Scoops is a dude that loves to have fun and play baseball and often on Mother’s Day weekend those two things converge. While the Red Sox piled on 11 runs via 14 hits last night, Devers didn’t contribute.
Today was a different story as the offense was completely powered by the young third basemen with an assist from a Hunter Renfroe moon blast. But the story should focus on Devers as this isn’t a new occurrence for him. Since being brought up to the main roster Boston is undefeated when Raffy plays on Mother’s Day and my guy loves to smash baseballs on this day.
He was called up at the end of 2017 so he was unable to see Mother’s Day that year but since then he’s made sure to have some good days. His first shot at the holiday came in 2018, a year we all remember fondly but it isn’t one I’m sure he wants to think about too much. His first full season in the Majors saw him go 0-4 against the Blue Jays that day but at the end of the day, Boston walked away with a 5-3 win, one of just 108 that season.
Devers' dinger gets us on the board! pic.twitter.com/9jkTRn5edy
— Red Sox (@RedSox) May 9, 2021
While we saw glimpses of what he was capable of in 2018 it wasn’t until 2019 that Raffy broke out of his shell and became an offensive powerhouse for the Sox. A season that saw him go .311/361/.555/.916 with 32 homers, 115 RBI, and an AL-leading 54 doubles. When it came time to celebrate all the mommas out there in 2019 Devers put on the pink gear and made sure to make his proud. He’d go 3-5 against Seattle in an 11-2 victory that saw him score two runs while knocking in one of his own.
2020 was 2020. A year that I think we’d all like to move on from both a personal and baseball perspective. A truncated schedule saw games not begin until summertime which means the Red Sox weren’t able to play on their favorite holiday. Even though he had just 60 games to work with last year Raffy still managed to post a .263/.310/.483/.793 line 11 homers and 43 RBI, most of which came in the final half of the season. Not much to talk about here in regards to anything related to this team as the year sucked all around.
Now, the main event of the evening! I’m sure many of you were like me and expected yet another beating of the Orioles at the hands of the Red Sox but that wasn’t the case. Despite a starting pitcher that they absolutely should’ve crushed, they were held to just four runs on the day. Many of you are probably yelling at your screen that you watched the game and you know all of this and I get that because I watched it too. But the reason why today is the focal point of my writing here is that the entire offense was driven by Devers, again with some help from Renfroe.
After being non-existent in an offensive rout last night Raffy came through big by going 2-4 with a run, 3 RBI, and a strikeout in the 4-3 victory. If it wasn’t for him today the Red Sox very well may have lost, especially with how quiet everyone else was with runners in scoring position. Bogey, my dude, bases-loaded TWICE and nothing? You’re better than that. But the exciting corner infielder brought his pink bat and ear-to-ear grin with him to Camden Yards today and went to work.
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His solo shot in the second tied the game and then he dug Boston out of the deficit again in the sixth with a two-run double to put them up for good. Though Baltimore would fight back and make it a little stressful in the later innings it felt like these guys just couldn’t lose today. Hell, they haven’t lost on Mother’s Day since Big Scoops has been in the line! Today’s game pushed his stats to a .288/.375/.576/.951 line and those numbers don’t seem to be slowing down whatsoever.
He played a big part in today’s win and has played a big part in the early success of the 2021 Red Sox. They currently have the largest division lead in all of baseball, are the first team to 22 wins, have an MLB best 12-4 road record, and have the second-highest run differential at +36. As it stands him along with Xander Bogaerts and J.D. Martinez may be the best core in a long time for Boston. It doesn’t matter who’s on the mound or what day of the week it is, nobody wants to face those three, especially in sequence.
This has been a hell of a rebound for the Red Sox after two very disappointing seasons. There’s plenty of time left in the campaign and anything can happen but for the first time since 2018, it just doesn’t feel like these guys can lose. Obviously, they can as we’ve seen in recent weeks but they always seem to bounce back quickly and don’t stay down for too long. One of the main reasons for that is the play of Rafael Devers and his Mother’s Day numbers just help bolster that belief.