The long ball could only go such a long
way to advance the Pawtucket Red Sox’ cause Wednesday afternoon.
After collecting five unanswered runs within
the first three innings, all by virtue of home runs, the PawSox puffed out on
offense and let the visiting Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees whittle their way
back.
By the top of the ninth, Garrett Mock
came on with the simple task of salvaging a 5-4 triumph. Instead, he loaded the
bases with no outs and then surrendered the lead by virtue of Francisco
Cervelli’s two-run base hit.
Between Mock and Chorye Spoone, the
Yanks batted around in the top of the ninth and added an additional two runs,
one from Steve Pearce’s sacrifice fly immediately after Colin Curtis stole
third and the other from Brandon Laird’s single that brought Cervelli home from
second base.
The Sox nearly played at the exact same
game in the bottom half, filling the bags with three outs to spare and Daniel
Nava bound for the batter’s box. His sacrifice fly would bring home Tony Thomas
to reduce the deficit to 8-6, but Scranton closer Kevin Whelan then found a
long-elusive solution to Mauro Gomez and Will Middlebrooks.
Back-to-back strikeouts to the two hot
hitters finalized the Yankees’ 8-6 victory at McCoy Stadium and denied the Sox
what would have been their first 10-game winning streak in franchise history.
The heart of the batting lineup stopped
beating just when it was needed most. Quite the contrast to the tone it set in
Wednesday’s early stages.
Each of the first five Pawtucket batters
to challenge Yankees’ hurler Adam Warren pushed the ball beyond the infield.
After a pair of flyouts to straightaway center, three unanswered two-out hits
from the bottom of the order opened up the scoring.
Nava dropped a single to the opposite
field in shallow left, then came home when Gomez belted a 2-2 pitch over the
right field wall for a 2-0 advantage. The equally radiant Middlebrooks followed
up with a single, though he would be stranded to end the first.
Pedro Ciriaco would lead off the third
with his own blast over the left field fence. Four batters later, Nava was
taken home again, this time by Middlebrooks, whose homer to right-center
augmented the edge to 5-0.
PawSox starter Doug Mathis made it
through 3.1 innings without surrendering a hit, but suddenly found his five-run
cushion shriveled down to two on the Yanks second hit of the day. A walk and a
single set up designated hitter Jack Cust’s three-run dinger in the top of the
fourth to make it 5-3, Pawtucket, in the fourth.
Curtis brought Scranton to within one in
the top of the fifth by lining a two-out single to center, stealing second and
hustling home via Francisco Cervelli’s own base hit.
Reliever Andrew Miller faced a
toe-curling predicament in the top of the sixth when Scranton put two men in
scoring position and Ramiro Pena sculpted a 3-0 advantage in his at-bat. But
upon looking at three unanswered strikes, Pena and the Pinstripes saw their
threat evaporate.
Rich Hill and Will Inman each did enough
to repress the Yanks in the seventh and eighth innings, respectively. But once
the ball was handed to Mock, he made a regular mockery of the bullpen.
PawSox
pluses
Middlebrooks has now homered six times
in his last eight games and remains tied with Gomez for the team lead with 13
extra-base hits apiece.
Nava went 3-for-4 and has now scored at
least one run in each of his last five games. In addition, after splashing a
six-game hitting drought on April 18, he has since hit safely in five of his
last six outings.
Centerfielder Josh Kroeger joined the
afternoon’s multi-hit club with singles in the third and the eighth, but was
left hanging on deck in the ninth.
Sox
stains
Mock’s blown save―15 balls out of 33
pitches, three walks and three runs allowed―kind of speaks for itself. And the
prom night pimple on his game log sticks out all the more given that he had
surrendered no runs in any of his previous five appearances in 2012.
Mathis virtually maxed out his pitch
count prematurely, in part, due to a greater number of balls than most any
PawSox partisan would have preferred. He was finished after five full innings
of work, which saw him throw 53 of 91 offerings for strikes.
Andrew Miller was not much better in the
sixth, throwing 12 out of 22 pitches for balls. The reason the Yankees
threatened in that inning was because Miller had walked Cust, hit Laird and
allowed both to escape to scoring position on a wild pitch.
Jose Iglesias finished this brief,
two-game series 0-for-7 at the plate.
Yankees
notes
Adam Miller and Chase Whitley
successively pitched a 1-2-3 inning of relief in the sixth and the seventh,
respectively, striking out one Pawtucket batter apiece. Whitley returned for
the eighth and benched Mike Rivera on three unanswered strikes for another
1-2-3 shift.
Pearce was the only Scranton hitter not
to strike out at any point on Wednesday.
Before his insurance single in the
ninth, Laird’s batting log for the day consisted of two strikeouts and two
hits-by-pitch.
Miscellany
PawSox right fielder Alex Hassan reached
base twice without registering a hit. He was hit by a pitch in the third and
walked in the fifth.
Before they commence their road trip
with a wraparound weekend in Columbus, Thursday will be an off-day for the Sox,
their last before May 23, barring any weather-induced impediments to their
schedule.
