Red Sox 4, Rays 3: Bobby Dalbec homers in fifth straight game

Red Sox 4, Rays 3

The race to the bottom was put on hold for one night at Tropicana Field.

The takeaways:

1. Bobby Dalbec went deep again

Why do pitchers keep throwing off-speed stuff anywhere near the zone to Dalbec?

He got another one in the fifth inning from lefty Josh Fleming, who tossed an 81-mph changeup a little down, but dead-center for Dalbec, who looks as good as it gets against off-speed stuff. The hulking first baseman smoked it opposite field to keep his homer streak going. He’s now homered in five straight games. And he’s the fifth player in MLB history with six homers in his first 10 MLB games.

Three of the six homers have come against off-speed pitches.

“Pretty cool seeing obviously Bobby coming up his first year and doing this,” manager Ron Roenicke said. “It’s pretty amazing actually.”

Overall Dalbec went 1-for-4 and struck out in his other three plate appearances, which is on brand for the all-or-nothing prospect. He’s hitting just .250 with a whopping 19 strikeouts in 36 at-bats, but the power plays and the Red Sox are getting a good glimpse of that this September.

“The thing I like is after he strikes out, he’s not down and there’s still a lot of fight in him,” Roenicke said. “It’s easy when you strike out, it’s easy to get down and upset about it and you don’t bounce back and have that same fight in you.

“What he’s doing is really good to be able to forget about that last at-bat, the last two or three, and put together a good one and when they make a mistake you hit it. That’s what the good hitters do, the guys that are consistent. Even when they’re going bad they’re still fighting up there, still not giving away at-bats. That’s what he’s doing.”

2. Suddenly, the Red Sox are striking guys out

Mike Kickham made his first start since 2013 and relied almost exclusively on breaking balls to strike out eight batters in just four innings. He threw just eight fastballs out of 65 pitches and one of them was a 91-mph heater for strike three. It must’ve looked like it was triple digits after his steady dose of junk.

The Rays are one of the best offenses in baseball but are missing some key contributors and looked off at the plate in this one.

Kickham had previously struck out just four batters over five innings while allowing three runs in his previous two appearances with the Red Sox, his first big league club since he pitched for the Giants in 2014.

Ryan Weber followed and struck out four more. Jeffrey Springs fanned one, Ryan Brasier fanned two and Matt Barnes walked the leadoff batter but struck out two to close out the game.

The Sox entered the night ranked 19th in MLB with a strikeout rate of just 8.6 per nine innings, but fanned 17 batters in this one.

3. Rafael Devers had a game

The red-hot third baseman is locked in at the plate right now, just in time for the Red Sox to avoid the worst record in MLB.

Devers smacked a two-run blast on a hanging slider in the third inning and added the go-ahead single through the right side of the infield in the seventh.

He was 3-for-4 with three RBI and is now up to .275 with an .861 OPS on the season.

In his last 11 games he’s 19-for-42 (.452) with six homers and 15 RBI.

“I haven’t changed much,” Devers said. “Obviously I’ve made a couple of adjustments here and there, but I’m still maintaining my aggressiveness at the plate and just coming into work every day like I’m supposed to. Obviously during the beginning of the season things weren’t going my way but now that they are, I’m starting to reap the benefits.”

J.D. Martinez went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts and six left on base to fall to .211 with a .672 OPS.

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