If Lucas Giolito thought he was a morning person, the Patriots Day assignment in Fenway Park corrected him a hurry.
To say the 11 a.m. start did not agree with him would be an understatement. Giolito allowed hits to the first six Red Sox he faced during a six-run first inning that forced Tony La Russa into crisis mode one morning after a doubleheader, albeit one of a 14-inning variety.
First, he tried pushing Giolito for a second inning after a 46-pitch first in which the Red Sox notched five hits on his changeup. Alex Cora's history invites the idea of sign-stealing, but when Giolito's cruising, it's not like there's a whole lot of mystery in what he's doing. A lack of life seemed to be the bigger issue. The fastballs didn't get swings underneath, and the changeups didn't get swings over the top. Outside of Enrique Hernandez's leadoff homer, no Boston hitter really smoked Giolito's offspeed stuff. They just kept the hands back and lined drives into the outfield, resulting in the kind of disaster that Giolito's high-changeup approach seems to invite.
If you watched Giolito in the first and thought a second inning wouldn't fly, the game quickly agreed. He gave up a homer to J.D. Martinez and a walk to Rafael Devers, and out came Tony La Russa to start a series of bullpen moves that ended with Yermín Mercedes pitching the seventh, and Danny Mendick handling the eighth.
While there's usually a welcome novelty with position players on the mound, it loses its charm when they have to cover two innings. Mercedes' inning could have been a disaster, as a line-drive double play gave Mercedes an out he sorely needed, as he needed 32 pitches to finish the inning even with the help.
Mendick also flirted with danger, as the first two men he faced reached on an HBP and a single. But Mendick's ... knuckleball ... was good enough to get the job done. He made it through the inning unscathed on just 15 pitches, including a strikeout of Franchy Cordero. His final pitch was a 39.6 mph eephus that induced a fielder's choice.
The White Sox offense would've been hard-pressed to make a game out of it, but besides the customary 1-0 lead they grabbed in the top of the first, they couldn't mount an attack fast enough to pose a threat.
Here's a case where the White Sox were effective enough with runners in scoring position. They went 3-for-11 in such situations and stranded only five, and they converted every opportunity.
First inning: Tim Anderson led off with a single, stole second on a fun slide, then scored on Luis Robert's double.
Third inning: Nick Madrigal led off with a triple and scored on a one-out Adam Eaton double.
Fifth inning: Anderson kept the inning alive with a two-out double, then scored on an Eaton "double." (Cordero pulled up as though the ball was going to carom off the Green Monster, and it instead bounced on the warning track.)
Seventh inning: Leury García reached on an infield single, moved to third on an Anderson single two batters later, then scored on Eaton's groundout.
The problem was the White Sox only had one total baserunner in the five other innings. Nate Eovaldi had strong right-handed stuff and fanned 10 over 6⅓ innings without a walk, including a rare swinging strike three on Madrigal. Garrett Whitlock handled the final eight outs, as Boston had a much easier day managing its pitching staff.
Bullet points:
*García committed an error when he failed to cleanly pick up a single to left, resulting in extra bases all around. That meant that only seven of Giolito's eight runs were earned.
*Zack Burdi gave up a pair of runs in his 2021 debut, but he threw three innings on 49 pitches, was the bigger objective.
*José Abreu seemed like he could've used a day off after grounding into nearly three double plays on Sunday, and an 0-for-4, three-strikeout performance reinforces that notion.
*Anderson went 3-for-4 from the leadoff spot, and provided the only real enjoyable moment of the ballgame.
