April 28, 2013: Red Sox complete four-game sweep of Astros, tie club record with 18 wins in April

For years, the major-league baseball season began in mid-April. The leagues expanded to a 162-game schedule beginning in 1961, but it wasn’t until 1984 that the Boston Red Sox started the season before April 5. They opened that year on April 2 in Anaheim against the California Angels.

You win some; you lose some. So the saying goes. In part because there simply weren’t enough games on the schedule, the first time the Red Sox won as many as 18 games in April was the 98th season of franchise history – 1998, when they went 18-8 for the month. That year’s team finished second in the American League East Division at 92-70. In 2003 the Sox also went 18-8 in April,1 on their way to a 95-67 record and a second-place finish in the division.

The 2013 season began on April 1 in New York. The Red Sox took two of three from the Yankees, then two of three in Toronto. A 4-2 homestand, which included a sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays, was followed by three wins on the road in Cleveland. That put the Red Sox at 11-4, a good start by any measure, particularly for a team that had finished in last place in 2012 with a 69-93 record.2

The Red Sox then came home to Fenway Park for 10 games against the Kansas City Royals, Oakland Athletics, and Houston Astros. By the morning of Sunday, April 28 (as it happens, it was State of Maine Day), they had a record of 17-7 after winning the first three of four games against the Astros. With the best record in baseball, the Red Sox had been in first place in the division all year, the longest continuous stretch since 1918 that they had held first place to start a season.3

Several individual Red Sox held impressive season-starting stats. Pitcher Clay Buchholz was already 5-0, first baseman Mike Napoli had accumulated 27 RBIs and 18 extra-base hits, and center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury already had 11 stolen bases.

Sunday’s starting pitcher for first-year manager John Farrell was 34-year-old John Lackey, who had lost his only start of 2013 after missing the entire 2012 season for Tommy John surgery on his right elbow. He was just coming off the 21-day disabled list.4 Houston manager Bo Porter had right-hander Bud Norris (3-2) start.

After striking out the first batter and getting the second to ground out, Lackey walked two and then saw the Astros take a 1-0 lead on DH Ronny Cedeño’s hard-hit RBI single, which skittered over the mound and into center field.

The Red Sox tied it in the bottom of the inning. With one out, right fielder Daniel Nava hit a ball down the left-field line that one-hopped the wall for a two-base hit. Second baseman Dustin Pedroia walked. Designated hitter David Ortiz – who had missed the season’s first 15 games – singled to left, to the right of shortstop Marwin Gonzalez, driving in Nava. It gave Ortiz RBIs in eight of his first nine games of 2013.5

Neither team scored in the second or third. In fact, after giving up a leadoff single in the top of the second, Lackey retired the next 13 batters in order, extending into the sixth.

In the bottom of the fourth, the Red Sox took a 3-1 lead. Napoli led off with a single to right but was easily thrown out when unwisely trying to go for a double. Left fielder Mike Carp poked a single into left. Catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia singled to right, just inside the first-base bag. Norris struck out third baseman Will Middlebrooks, but shortstop Stephen Drew tripled into the right-field corner for two runs.

After Lackey induced three groundouts in the top of the fifth, the Red Sox added two more runs in their half. Nava reached first base – and then took second – when Gonzalez “bobbled a hard grounder … and then threw the ball on a straight line into the stands.”6 The throw went over the Red Sox dugout and into the seats behind, and Gonzalez was charged with two errors on the play.

Pedroia pulled a double inside third and down the left-field line and drove home Nava, who reached second on a headfirst slide. After a couple of outs, Carp doubled to left-center, off the wall about two-thirds of the way up, and Pedroia scored.

With one out in the top of the sixth, Lackey allowed three successive singles but recovered with a strikeout and a force play at second. He’d thrown 27 pitches in the first inning, then just 54 more over the next five innings. The Boston starter left with a 5-1 lead. “It was fun,” Lackey said postgame. “It was definitely a first big challenge in a long time. To be able to get the strikeout and the ground ball to get out of there was a lot of fun, exciting.”7

Clayton Mortensen relieved Lackey to pitch the seventh. He was charged with a fielding error, but otherwise got three outs. Norris came out of the game too, replaced by Jose Cisnero in the bottom of the seventh. Nava led off with a single to the right of second base; he went to second on a balk. Pedroia lined out, but Ortiz doubled into the right-field corner and the Red Sox’ lead increased to 6-1.

There was no further scoring in the game. Koji Uehara pitched the eighth for the Red Sox and gave up a single to first baseman Carlos Peña. A wild pitch let Peña move up 90 feet, but he got no further. Cisnero set down the Red Sox in order.

Andrew Bailey threw the top of the ninth for Farrell. Right fielder Rick Ankiel hit a one-out ground-rule double into the right-field stands. Gonzalez flied out to deep center, Ankiel tagging and advancing to third base. Center fielder Robbie Grossman also hit a deep fly ball, to right, but Nava leapt and made a diving catch for the final out. Boston had a 6-1 win.

The Red Sox had swept four from the Astros, who were 5-for-38 with runners in scoring position. In 17 innings, Houston starters had allowed 33 hits, 10 walks, and 22 runs. Ankiel was impressed with Boston batters: “When you watched them hit [Sunday], it seemed like every time they got a guy on, they drove him in.”8

The Red Sox had their 18th win in April – with two days to spare. They had scored 40 more runs than they had allowed.

After an offday, the Red Sox played in Toronto on April 30, and lost 9-7. Boston’s 18-8 April record was still the best in baseball. The last two times they had held that distinction were 2004 (15-6) and 2007 (16-8), and both times they went on to win the World Series. There was a lot of baseball yet – another 136 regular-season games – but for a team that had finished last the year before, this was a heady beginning.

The 2013 Red Sox played .500 ball in May (15-15), but never had a losing month.9 They did indeed win the World Series, successively beating Tampa Bay, the Detroit Tigers, and the St. Louis Cardinals in the postseason.

Lackey finished the season 10-13, with a 3.52 ERA. He won a game in each round of the postseason – winning Game Two of the Division Series, Game Three of the ALCS, and the clinching Game Six of the World Series.  

After the season, Lackey was honored with the Tony Conigliaro Award, given each year to the major-league player “who has overcome adversity through the attributes of spirit, determination, and courage that were trademarks of Tony C.” (Jon Lester, whose 15 wins led the Red Sox staff in 2013, had received the Conigliaro Award in 2007, a year after being treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.)10

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to John Fredland for supplying Houston newspaper coverage. A video of the game is available on YouTube.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201304280.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B04280BOS2013.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npL6hMHs4ws

Notes

1 The Red Sox had opened the 2003 season on March 31 with a loss to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

2 The only American League team with a worse record in 2012 was the 66-96 Minnesota Twins.

3 The team’s win in this April 28 game set a new franchise record for “the longest ever continuous stretch that a Red Sox team has ever held 1st place to begin a campaign.” Though they recorded only four strikeouts in this game, that gave the team a total of 248 – setting a team record for the most in any month. See Red Sox Notes, April 29, 2013.

4 Lackey had lost, 5-0, on April 6 in Toronto. Farrell was using him sparingly while he worked his way back from elbow surgery. He’d hurt his arm in the April 6 game, though it was a biceps strain and not his elbow. Farrell was hoping Lackey could go five innings against the Astros.

5 He did not drive in a run in this game, but his base hit extended his consecutive-game hitting streak to 20 games, dating back to July 2, 2012. The streak came to an end at 27 games, on May 8.

6 “Game Recap,” Houston Chronicle, April 29, 2013: C4.

7 Peter Abraham, “Red Sox Don’t Let Up, Claim Fifth Straight Win,” Boston Globe, April 29, 2013: C1.

8 Brian T. Smith, “Change of Scenery Welcome after Fenway,” Houston Chronicle, April 29, 2013: C4.

9 The team was 17-11 in June, 15-10 in July, 16-12 in August, and 16-9 in September.

10 In 2017 SABR published a book honoring Tony Conigliaro Award winners through the 2016 season. Bill Nowlin and Clayton Trutor, eds., Overcoming Adversity: Baseball’s Tony Conigliaro Award (Phoenix: SABR, 2017).