Red Sox Jump All Over Lucas Giolito With First-Inning Onslaught In Monday Matinee

By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston

BOSTON (CBS) — If you were tardy in getting to your television Monday morning for the annual Patriots’ Day matinee at Fenway Park, you missed … a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

With the White Sox in Boston to finish out a four-game set, the Red Sox fell behind early when Luis Robert laced a line-drive double down the line in left field to score Tim Anderson from second base. Nathan Eovaldi avoided further damage, inducing a harmless groundout and a lazy fly ball to end the top of the first.

And then the bottom of the first inning happened. Boy, did it ever.

It began with Kiké Hernandez turning on an 0-2 changeup from Lucas Giolito and sending it high and deep to left field. The ball clearly hit off the top of the wall, but the umpiring crew on the field initially believed that the ball had magically bounced up after hitting a wall. Fortunately in the age of replay, it took all of 10 seconds on review to determine that Hernandez had actually hit a home run to tie the game at 1-1.

As it turned out though, the Red Sox didn’t really need that review to go their way, as Hernandez would have certainly scored eventually, given what took place next.

Here’s how it played out (all of which happened with Xander Bogaerts out of the lineup, mind you):

–Alex Verdugo single–J.D. Martinez single–Rafael Devers single, Verdugo scores–Christian Vazquez bunt single on first pitch–Marwin Gonzalez single on first pitch, Martinez scores

At that point, the Red Sox led 3-1. Giolito had yet to record an out. And the bases were still loaded. It was a tough spot.

Fortunately for Giolito, he finally recorded an out, getting Hunter Renfroe to ground out to third base on a check-swing. Unfortunately for Giolito, Jake Lamb’s only play was to first base, and Devers scored from third on the play.

Up next was Franchy Cordero, who sent a 1-2 changeup into left field for an RBI single, scoring Christian Vazquez. Making matters worse for Chicago was a misplay in left field by Leury Garcia, which allowed Gonzalez to score and Cordero to take second base.

The score was 6-1 at that point, and no more damage was done on the scoreboard that inning. But the Red Sox didn’t let Giolito go without making him work. Namely, Bobby Dalbec battled and battled and battled when he strode to the plate with one out and a runner on second base. After the count went to 2-2, Dalbec fouled off three straight pitches. Then he took ball three. Dalbec fouled off the 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th pitch of the at-bat, before watching watching the 14th pitch hit the dirt for ball four.

Giolito finally stopped the bleeding by getting an infield popout from Hernandez and a shallow flyout by Verdugo. But at 6-1, the damage was done.

It didn’t exactly improve for him in the second, either. After Eovaldi mowed down the White Sox by striking out the side in the top of the inning, Giolito headed back out to the mound and was immediately taken deep by Martinez on the first pitch of the frame.

Giolito then walked Devers, and that was the end of the day for right-hander who entered the day with a 1-0 record and a 2.55 ERA. That ERA ballooned to 5.79 after Devers scored on a sacrifice fly after Giolito exited the game to give Boston an 8-1 lead. Giolito threw just 54 pitches in his 1-plus inning of work, allowing eight hits and walking a pair of batters.

The eight runs allowed (seven earned) were the most Gioliti has given up in an outing since April 21, 2018, when he surrendered nine runs to the Astros in two innings of work.

For the Red Sox, suffering two straight losses in Sunday’s doubleheader clearly didn’t sit well with anyone on the club. Whether or not they got any sleep can be questioned, but they surely showed up at Fenway on Monday morning ready to work.