The Sox took on the Cubs and their former GM Theo Epstein yesterday. It was the second outing for Daisuke Matsuzaka and he was hoping for his first win of 2012. Dice would have to wait for another day.
Dice-K struggled out of the gate and showed some of those bad habits that tend to drive fans crazy. In the 1st inning, Dice-K walked three batters and had the bases loaded with 2 outs. Dice-K wasn’t able to pull a Houdini move to get out of the inning without any damage. Dice-K gave up a 2 run RBI single to Clevenger to have the Sox down 0-2. In the 2nd inning, Dice-K gave up what was scored a triple to pitcher Ryan Dempster. However, if I was the official scorer I would have scored it as a single or a double and an error on Adrian Gonzalez. Dempster ended up scoring on an RBI single from DeJesus. Sox 0-3. After the 2nd, Dice-K seemed like a different pitcher. I thought he was not going to last long in this game and low and behold Dice-K was still on the mound in the 6th inning. He finished the inning and low and behold, he had himself a quality start. However, he was still looking down the barrel of a loss. Scott Atchison came out and pitched the 7th inning and Mark Melancon pitched the 8th.
The Sox bats were once again silent though. They weren’t able to get anything going against Ryan Dempster. I can handle that since he is a good pitcher who will definitely be playing for another team before the trade deadline. Dempster pitched 7 strong scoreless innings. However, the Cubs bullpen is something that the Sox should have been able to get to. Russell had a 1-2-3 inning in the 8th and then it was on to 9th with Marmol as the closer. Salty ground out, Sweeney hit a single, Aviles reached on an error, Nava struck out and Podsednik wallked to load the bases with two outs for Dustin Pedroia. Red Sox Nation had a moment of hope before Pedey ground out to 3rd base to end the game. Sox 0-3.
Red Sox 0 Cubs 3 BOXSCORE
WP: Dempster (3-3) LP: Matsuzaka (0-2) SV: Marmol (3)
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