Sunday, March 24, 2013

Red Sox Relievers Cough Up Another Loss

AP Photo
In a depressingly common Spring Training pattern, the Red Sox are getting great starting pitching, but losing games when various members of the bullpen gag away victories. Of course, this is directly counter-intuitive to the conventional wisdom that the bullpen is team's preeminent strength. Part of the issue, of course, is that Boston maddeningly keeps inserting pitchers who will never see the business side of Fenway Park. Why are they doing this so late in the Spring Training season? Yesterday, in a 5-3 loss to the vaunted Pirates, Clay Buchholz pitched a four-hitter into the sixth inning, but Anthony Carter gave up two runs for the loss (to be fair, Junichi Tazawa also yielded two runs from the 'pen). Jose Iglesias went 1 for 3 with an RBI.