Borges: Clay Buchholz on, but nothing's…
Borges: Clay Buchholz on, but nothing's working out
Red Sox LF Brock Holt, left, and center fielder Jackie Bradley Jr. (far right) line up with players from the Cedar Grove Senior Baseball Indians for the national anthem at Fenway Park on Tuesday, July 1, 2014.
Boston Red Sox Stephen Drew is picked off on a throw by the catcher to first base to end the second inning at Fenway Park on Tuesday, July 1, 2014.
After Chicago Cubs'' Anthony Rizzo scores game-winning run on Luis Valbuena''s (left) ninth inning sac fly, Boston Red Sox closer Koji Uehara (left) and catcher A.J. Pierzynski react at Fenway Park on Tuesday, July 1, 2014.
Boston Red Sox Dustin Pedroia thinks he''s safe, but after review it was confirmed that Chicago Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo had the ball before he reaches the bag for the last out of a 2-1 loss to the Chicago Cubs at Fenway Park on Tuesday, July 1, 2014.
By Ron Borges |
PUBLISHED: July 2, 2014 at 12:00 a.m. | UPDATED: November 18, 2018 at 12:00 a.m.
Clay Buchholz pitched well last night, but things didn't work out.
Koji Uehara made some decent pitches in the top of the ninth of a 1-1 game, but Anthony Rizzo and Starlin Castro hit them anyway. Things didn't work out for him either.
That's the kind of desultory, depressing season it's becoming for the Red Sox. Night after night, things don't work out.
They brought up the kids, but things haven't worked out.
They brought back Stephen Drew, and the only thing that's worked out for him was ruining the no-hit bid of Jake Arrieta, and that swing Monday exemplified the way things feel around Fenway Park at the moment. Even when you do things right, it comes out wrong.
Last night, the Sox lost for the second straight night to one of the worst teams in baseball, the toothless Chicago Cubs, on an evening when Buchholz had a second straight strong outing since returning from the disabled list. Buchholz' 61⁄3-inning, 100-pitch performance was his best of the season, but as seems to keep happening, it didn't work out.
Still, the Sox tried to take heart in the fact Buchholz didn't issue a walk for his second straight start, allowed only one run and five hits and seemed to have a dominant fastball and a control of himself absent until his first start off the DL in Seattle last week.
Things might not have worked out, but it appears Buchholz has worked out the kinks that had developed in his delivery to the point where one had reason to believe, for him at least, things might eventually work out.
"Clay was good," catcher A.J. Pierzynski said after a sacrifice fly to center field by Luis Valbuena off Uehara in the ninth resulted in a 2-1 loss for the slowly sinking Sox. "His stuff in Seattle was better than before he went on the DL. Tonight it was better than he looked in Seattle. He looks better and more comfortable out there."
Buchholz (3-4) looked better and more comfortable on the mound than he did after the game answering questions that really no longer have any answers because, frankly, the Sox have no answers. They have as many questions as you do and as many doubts as you do, but answers? Not really.
They can't verbalize this so they say, as Dustin Pedroia did after ending the game on a bang-bang play at first that might have gone the Sox' way a year ago, that, "We're trying to win games." Imagine so, but at the moment, they've won only 38 while losing 46, a record that makes them thankful only for the continued presence of the Tampa Bay Rays beneath them in the AL East.
"It gets a little frustrating at times," admitted the always calm but probably not always serene Sox manager, John Farrell, after another night of minimal offensive production left 10 men on base.
"We've got to continue to focus on, internally, the opportunities are there. We're just not cashing in."
Well, that's not only one way to look at it, it's the only way he, Buchholz, Pedroia and the rest of them can look at it. But when you keep not cashing in, after a while one has to wonder if those kind of situations aren't really opportunities, they're more like a hot dog on a string. The more you chase it, the more you miss it.
"That's the second straight start since being activated (Buchholz) pitched real well," Farrell pointed out. "He got to a pitch count (100) he hasn't had all season."
Perhaps there's cold comfort in that, but not much. Certainly a strong and mechanically sound Buchholz is important to the Red Sox' success, but last night he was both and . . . well . . . things still didn't work out.
"I felt like I pitched pretty good," Buchholz said before acknowledging the one inning he really needed to pitch good he didn't, allowing the Cubs a run in the sixth immediately after his teammates' somnambulant bats staked him to a one-run lead when Jackie Bradley Jr., of all people, launched a two-out double to left-center and then scored on back-to-back singles by Brock Holt and Pedroia. It was a run that should have mattered, but three Cubs batters later it didn't.
"The one inning where your team scores, you don't want to go out and give up a run," Buchholz said. "I was unable to do that."
In other words, on a night when Clay Buchholz said all his pitches felt pretty good and the power and angle of his fastball particularly so, things didn't work out. In Brazil, the U.S. national soccer team knew how he felt.
Things didn't work out for them either. The difference is they don't have to keep repeating that for three more months.
Clay Buchholz
Ron Borges
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