Red Sox fans haven’t had many baseball games to get excited about, but these past two games against the Mariners they’ve at least received their moneys worth.
Today we saw the usually-stellar Felix Hernandez try to bounce back after watching his team get embarrassed in Boston 15-1 on Friday night. Instead, he ended up having the worst start of his career.
The Seattle Mariners ace was tagged for a career-high 10 earned runs by the Boston Red Sox over 2 1/3 innings, but the damage inflicted on the Mariners was far from over.
Pablo Sandoval, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Alejandro De Aza all went deep off Hernandez, who was denied his MLB-leading 15th victory in what finished as a 22-10 drubbing by the Red Sox.
That wasn’t the only history happening at Fenway Park on Saturday, though. The usually-infuriating Jackie Bradley Jr. has recently been on a hot streak, and has happened to make Red Sox history in the process.
The 25-year-old finished 5-for-6 with two home runs, three doubles, and seven RBIs to become the first Red Sox player to have five extra-base hits in a game.
Reminder: the Red Sox have been playing baseball for over a century and nobody has done what JBJ just accomplished.
That bears repeating for Boston fans who are looking at finishing last in the division for the third time in four years. The lone exception being their World Series Championship, of course.
Perhaps the outbreak in offense is in part thanks to a wake up call served by John Farrell’s announcement of lymphoma. A terrible disease attacking someone you care about can often impact your work negatively, but in this case the team has responded in the most positive way possible.
The team had a total of 50 runs for the entire month of August prior to the announcement. Since then they’ve exploded for 37 in just two games. Hopefully the team’s play is easing Farrell’s adjustment to the news.
H/T the Score
