How Red Sox closer Brandon Workman survived wild ninth to save much-needed win

As Brandon Workman loaded the bases in the ninth inning, putting a big scare into a much-needed win for the Red Sox, NESN broadcaster Dennis Eckersley delivered a line fitting for the moment.

“Workman, he’ll make you smoke cigarettes, man,” Eckersley joked.

Workman emerged as one of the Red Sox’ best relievers last season and ultimately locked down the job as their closer, but he has struggled to find his footing this summer. In his first save opportunity of 2020 on Wednesday night, he made fans watching back home in Boston chew off their fingernails — at least — during a chaotic ninth that seemed destined for disaster.

The Red Sox entered the ninth up two runs, but despite loading the bases with no outs, Workman tiptoed around landmines and somehow survived. When Jose Peraza caught the final out on Robinson Cano’s blooper to short left, the shortstop pumped his fist, excited and maybe even a little bit relieved that the Red Sox snapped their four-game losing streak with a 6-5 victory over the Mets that certainly didn’t end comfortably.

“(Workman) was sweating a lot, he told me, but he got the work done and we won the game,” said Red Sox catcher Christian Vazquez.

It has not been a fun July for Workman, who had major struggles during intrasquad games in summer camp. He seemed to right the ship a little with a 1-2-3 inning in one of the Red Sox’ exhibition games against the Blue Jays, but those struggles reared its ugly head Wednesday.

It seemed to center around the command of his curveball. All six of his pitches to Brandon Nimmo were curves, most of them missing for a walk, and four more to Jeff McNeil resulted in another walk. Suddenly, after Pete Alonso got a hold of one high in the zone and dumped over the head of Mitch Moreland down the first-base line, the Mets suddenly had the bases loaded with no outs.

Red Sox manager Ron Roenicke said that curveball location was similarly one of the roots of Workman’s problems in summer camp, but it was a little bit different on Wednesday.

“The difference would be there were a lot of really good curveballs today that were down and they didn’t chase,” Roenicke said. “Early in camp, it was more the curveballs that were up out of the zone. It’s definitely better to be down out of the zone than it is to be up.”

Workman changed up his pitch mix starting with Alonso’s at-bat to include more cutters, and Vazquez said he thinks that helped. To his credit, Workman barreled down to make some big pitches. He froze Michael Conforto with a fastball for a much-needed strikeout, and though a run scored and everyone was safe on J.D. Davis’ grounder to Rafael Devers — who made a big stop to keep the ball in the infield — Workman didn’t panic.

Facing Yoenis Cespedes, Workman went down 2-0 on a pair of curves but Cespedes, who seemed to be focused on cranking a ball out of Citi Field instead of getting a ball in play to tie the game, swung for the fences on a curve well out of the zone before ultimately striking out swinging. That set up Cano, whose soft fly out ended things.

“Command of his fastball, command of his curveball, he didn’t do either one of those until the end when he had to make pitches, and then he made some really good pitches,” Roenicke said of Workman.

In the dugout, though Workman himself may have been sweating it out, the Red Sox had all the faith in their closer. As close as it may have been, he got the job done.

“You’ve got all the confidence in the world in him,” said starter Nathan Eovaldi. “There was never any doubt in my mind that Workman would be able to get it done. Yeah, it was close, but Devers comes up and makes a really good stop, stopping that ball in the hole, prevents probably being a tied ballgame right there. Workman’s able to slam the door and do his job.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3jTnjJU