Red Sox Report: Bard’s starting debut a dud
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
After 192 appearances out of the bullpen, it was finally time to see if Daniel Bard could make the conversion from reliever, to starter.
The jury is still out on this one.
Bard threw 5+ innings and gave up five runs on eight hits overall as Boston dropped a 7-3 decision to the Toronto Blue Jays Tuesday night at Rogers Center.
"I thought he was very good, first pitch of the game was a ground ball base hit and they scored a run, but he was pitching well all night…he got ahead of hitters, he threw over 90 pitches, they were all quality," manager Bobby Valentine said afterward. "It was good enough to win, he just didn’t get one tonight."
The Jays jumped on Bard from the outset, as Yunel Escobar singled on his first pitch as a starter - and two outs later, scratched the first run of the game across on an Edwin Encarnacion base hit.
Toronto scored two more in the third inning. Escobar and Kelly Johnson led off with back-to-back singles, Jose Bautista struck out and Adam Lind lined an RBI single to center. One out later, Brett Lawrie knocked a single through the right side, scoring Johnson.
Jays' starter Kyle Drabek kept the Sox scoreless into the sixth leading 3-0, when Jacoby Ellsbury led off with a walk and moved to third on Dustin Pedroia's double. Adrian Gonzalez followed with a sacrifice fly, Pedroia advanced to third, and Drabek was replaced after walking David Ortiz. Toronto escaped when Jason Frasor came on and got Kevin Youkilis to ground into a double play, effectively killing Boston's best scoring opportunity of the night.
Toronto put the game out of reach by scoring three runs in the bottom half of the sixth inning for a 6-1 advantage. J.P. Arencibia lined a bases-loaded, two-run single to right, and Colby Rasmus capped the outburst with a sacrifice fly to left. Encarnacion went 2-for-3 with a home run (off of Michael Bowden) in the 7th to lead the Jays' offense. The Red Sox scored their final two runs in the 9th on a ground-rule double from Gonzalez, scoring Nick Punto and Ellsbury.
"Its easy to look at results, but I think you have to look past that," Bard said in the locker room. "I think they had six or seven ground ball hits. I feel good about how I threw it, the results obviously stunk, but I wouldn’t change the way I threw."
Bard also walked one batter in his five-plus innings as the starter, striking out a career high six Blue Jays, as Boston falls to 1-4 on the season.
NOTES:
Bard's previous high in strikeouts was five, set in a 2 1.3 inning stint at Toronto on May 29, 2009...Boston shortstop Mike Aviles was held out of the lineup with a slightly sprained left ankle. Aviles suffered the injury breaking out of the box in his second at-bat Monday...Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka threw 49 pitches over three innings in an extended spring training game Monday...a Boston Globe report had outfielder Carl Crawford returning to Boston, perhaps for another look at his surgically-repaired wrist...a fan (believed to be a male, although the TV audience never saw him/her) jumped out of the seats down the right field line, stripped off his shirt and pants, and ran across the field during Toronto's rally in the bottom of the third. The game was also paused again in the fourth when a fan stood in the batter's eye in center field...left-handers Jon Lester and Ricky Romero will get the start in Wednesday's series finale, just after 12:30 pm ET...
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