Tuesday July 22, 2008
Red Sox 4, Mariners 2
Patience at the plate is something the Mariners have seriously lacked this season. Tonight was much of the same as Daisuke Matsusaka took the hill Tuesday night. The league knows to make “Dice-K” throw an abundance of pitches and force him to throw strikes . Somebody forgot to tell Seattle. The Mariners came out swinging at everything (just like last night) and constantly got behind in the count. The M’s lineup scraped together just five hits as Boston beat Seattle 4-2. Dice-K was ahead in the count for most of the night as he struck out six on his way to his 11th victory of the season. Matsusaka did walk three, but only threw 99 pitches in 7 1/3 innings.
Watching the Red Sox batters at the plate is the complete opposite. Boston’s lineup will make you work for everything as they drew six walks and constantly waited on pitches from M’s starter R.A. Dickey. All-star game MVP J.D. Drew displayed his patience at the plate in the first inning as he sat on the knuckleballers mid 80’s fastball. Drew laid off the knuckler and slammed a second straight Dickey fastball over the right field wall for his 18th home-run of the season. Dickey threw six innings of work, surrendering four runs on nine hits, walking three and failing to record a strikeout.
Boston scored three runs off Dickey in the top of the fifth. Drew and rookie shortstop Jed Lowrie added sacrifice flies in the inning and got some extra insurance on a Mike Lowell RBI double.
The Mariners managed to make it interesting off Matsusaka in the 8th. Rookie first baseman Bryan LaHair led off the inning with his first big league hit, and later scored on a Ichiro Suzuki RBI double to make it 4-1. Jose Lopez singled to center field on next pitch to score Ichiro to make it 4-2 with one out. Dice-K got the yank for lefty Hideki Okajima who got the final two outs of the inning. Jonathan Papelbon nailed down the M’s in order in the 9th for his 30th save of the season.
It was another solid outing from the Mariner bullpen as Roy Corcoran pitched a scoreless seventh, Arthur Rhodes struck out the side in the eighth, and Cesar Jimenez continued his successful call-up stint allowing a goose egg in the ninth. Kudos to the Mariner bullpen as they have been by far the biggest bright spot in a rough season.
Mariners rookie catcher Jeff Clement had to leave the ballgame as he injured his right thumb in the netting try to catch a foul ball. Apparently Clement lost the nail. He had the finger wrapped and stayed in the game, but eventually gave way to Kenji Johjima. I’m sure we will learn more tomorrow if Clement will miss any time.
Tomorrow afternoon’s 1:40 PT contest will mark the 5,000th game in Mariner history. Its going to be a solid pitching match-up as Mariner ace Felix Hernandez (7-6) will toe the rubber against Boston’s Clay Buchholz (2-5).
