Hanley Ramirez Crushes Three Home Runs To Bail Out Shitty Debut For Drew Pomeranz
Sometimes you gotta win ugly, and that was about as ugly as it can get without actually losing.
The Red Sox, at one point, led this game 8-0. It got as close as 8-7, and it got as uncomfortable as Matt Barnes inheriting a bases loaded with nobody out situation in the top of the sixth. But the right-hander let his balls hang, and pitched his way out of it with help from Hanley Ramirez turning a double play to cut a runner down at the plate, and squeezing the final out of the inning himself. Barnes gave the Red Sox three innings of shutout relief, which could very well be his best appearance this season.
But those two plays weren’t Hanley’s only contributions on the night. He had three more, in fact, and they were all home runs. Hanley had already gone deep twice when he came up to face Albert Suarez in the bottom of the fourth. Suarez drilled Hanley with a 1-1 sinker, which the first baseman believed to be intentional, and appeared to tell Suarez going down the first baseline that he would get him back.
Of course, he didn’t mean that he’d instruct one of his teammates to hit one of Suarez’s teammates. He wanted to put one of Suarez’s offerings into the seats, and like the baddest motherfucker on the planet, that’s exactly what he did. His next time up, after the Red Sox had escaped that bases loaded with nobody out situation in the top of the sixth, Hanley came up in the bottom half of the inning and ripped his third home run of the night over the Monster to give Boston some much needed breathing room.
The Red Sox needed that breathing room, because they got an absolute stinker out of Drew Pomeranz, who Boston acquired a week ago today. Now, I know where this is probably going. I’m sure there will be some who can’t wait to jump down my throat for including Pomeranz on my list of 10 pitchers who are having the best seasons this year (to that point), but the fact is that he deserved to be on there. At the time that he was acquired by the Red Sox, he had the fourth lowest ERA in the MLB, the second lowest opponents’ batting average and the second lowest opponents’ OPS to Clayton Kershaw. If you want to argue that it’s because he was in a pitcher’s ballpark or in a weak division, then that’s a fair argument, but I was going strictly by the numbers, which were top 10 worthy.
If you’re the Red Sox, you’re hoping that Pomeranz’s debut was a statistical anomaly and/or nerves, which it most likely was. But if you’re asking me if I think Pomeranz will be the same pitcher in Boston that he was in San Diego, the answer is no. Better league, better division, less favorable ballpark, etc. But even if his ERA is a full run higher in the American League compared to what it was in the National League, he’s still one of the best pitchers on that Red Sox staff, so it’s not something you should be alarmed about.
Pomeranz allowed five earned runs on eight hits, two of which were home runs, in 3+ innings. The left-hander did pitch into the fourth inning and faced seven batters, but could not record a single out. After putting up three scoreless innings to start his night, Pomeranz’s fourth inning went: walk, single, home run, single, home run, single, single. It got out of hand pretty fast. Pomeranz did have to wait about a half an hour while the Red Sox scored five runs of their own in the bottom of the third, but this is the big leagues. That shit’s gonna happen, especially if you’re pitching for the Red Sox, so that can’t be used as an excuse.
The good news is that Pomeranz’s bread and butter pitch, his cutter, was pretty good. He threw 19 cutters, only seven were balls and he didn’t allow a hit when he went to the cutter. The curveball was not what we’ve come to expect from Pomeranz, who throws more curveballs than anybody in the league. He threw 20 curveballs, and 12 of them were balls. If he doesn’t have that pitch, he’s going to have to rely on the fastball, and his fastball isn’t good enough to lean on when he doesn’t have his curveball to set up his other pitches. Both of the home runs that Pomeranz allowed were on the fastball, as were five of the eight hits that he allowed overall. While the cutter is what turned Pomeranz’s career around, he needs that curveball to be an effective pitch to tie his whole arsenal together, and that didn’t happen in his debut.
To end things on a brighter note, Sandy Leon went deep again, and this guy just continues to mash the baseball. He also had an RBI triple. At first, it was funny, like oh, ha ha, the fourth string catcher who nobody expected to even see playing time this year with Christian Vazquez, Blake Swihart and Ryan Hanigan ahead of him is having a hot week. But now? How many games into this hot streak do we have go before we start wondering if maybe Leon has figured something out at the major league level?
I mean, he’s obviously not a .435 hitter with an OPS of 1.198, but how much longer does this have to go on for before we start talking about if Leon is a legit, everyday major league catcher now? We’re 23 games and 74 plate appearances in, and he’s still putting up video game numbers. The Red Sox are obviously going to ride this until the wheels fall off, but I say 50 games. If he still hasn’t fallen off a cliff offensively after 50 games, then I think that’s when we start talking about whether or not Leon should be their starting catcher the rest of the way.
Final score: Red Sox 11, Giants 7