August 6, 2013: Red Sox overcome four first-inning passed balls in 15-10 win over Astros

Boston Red Sox knuckleballer Steven Wright made his first big-league start at Houston’s Minute Maid Park on August 6, 2013, and lasted only an inning. It was about as bizarre a start as one could imagine, in what turned out to be one of the wildest wins of the Red Sox’ 2013 World Series championship season.

Wright, a 28-year-old rookie from Hawaii, had given the Red Sox effective relief work in his previous two outings, setting up come-from-behind victories with 5? scoreless innings in Seattle on July 11 and three more scoreless innings when the Mariners visited Boston on August 1. He was credited with his first two major-league wins in those games.

The Tuesday night game on August 6 pitted the team with the best record in the American League (the Red Sox were 68-46) against the team with the worst (the Astros were 37-74). Houston had won the night before, though, shutting out Boston 2-0, with rookie left-hander Brett Oberholtzer throwing seven scoreless innings, the Red Sox getting only five hits in all.

Boston led the Tampa Bay Rays by a half-game in the AL East when Wright took the mound in the bottom of the first with the game scoreless. He walked the first batter, left fielder Robbie Grossman.

On the first pitch to center fielder Brandon Barnes, Grossman stole second. Wright’s third pitch to Barnes was a knuckleball, which catcher Ryan Lavarnway couldn’t handle. Grossman went to third on the passed ball. The next pitch hit Barnes.

Second baseman Jose Altuve stepped in; the second pitch was a passed ball, and Barnes took second. The fourth was another passed ball and Grossman scored, as Barnes advanced to third.

Altuve struck out, but the first pitch to catcher Jason Castro resulted in another passed ball – the fourth of the inning – and Barnes scored. The Astros had scored twice without benefit of a base hit.

Then they got that first hit, as Castro singled. DH Mark Krauss took a base on balls, on the ninth pitch he saw. Both runners moved up on a wild pitch. First baseman Brett Wallace grounded out to second base, and Castro scored the third run of the inning. Finally, a fly ball to the warning track in left field, on Wright’s 38th pitch of the game, ended the first inning.

It had been something of an unexpected start for Wright, intended to give the regular starters an extra day of rest. It was also the first time Wright had ever pitched indoors, noted Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe. Wright was quoted after the game as saying, “I had no feel for how the ball was moving. It was all over the place, even when I was warming up.”1

Lavarnway, who had caught Wright in eight Triple-A starts at Pawtucket, said, “I’ve never seen his ball move like that before.”2 He added, “I don’t know what it was. He’s been brilliant the last two times out. Sometimes it just goes the other way.”3

The start was, the Houston Chronicle wrote, “almost laughable, historically laughable to be exact.”4 The paper said Lavarnway was just the third catcher in major-league history to allow four passed balls.5

Brandon Workman was Red Sox manager John Farrell’s choice to pitch the second inning. Boston’s hole soon became deeper, as Grossman hit a two-run homer for a 5-0 Astros lead.

Astros manager Bo Porter had right-hander Jordan Lyles pitching. In his third season for Houston, Lyles was 4-5 with a 4.91 ERA. He got through the first two innings facing just six batters.

In the third, though, Boston took a chunk out of Houston’s lead. Shortstop Stephen Drew led off with a single. Two outs later, Jacoby Ellsbury homered to right-center. Shane Victorino singled, Dustin Pedroia was hit by a pitch, and David Ortiz singled, scoring Victorino and cutting the deficit to 5-3.

Houston responded by scoring single runs against Workman in the next two innings. Wallace hit a solo home run in the third, and the Astros added a seventh run in the fourth when right fielder L.J. Hoes led off with a triple and came home on shortstop Jonathan Villar’s single through a drawn-in infield.

In the top of the fifth, the Red Sox scored five times and took an 8-7 lead. Ellsbury’s walk was  followed by back-to-back RBI doubles by Victorino and Pedroia. Ortiz singled, Pedroia going to third. One out later, Pedroia scored on left fielder Mike Carp’s groundout to first, making it a one-run game.

After a wild pitch and Drew’s walk, Lavarnway doubled to the warning track in left, driving in Ortiz and Drew and earning himself a measure of redemption by giving his team the lead. Dallas Keuchel relieved Lyles and got the third out.

Workman pitched Boston’s first scoreless inning of the game in the fifth, and the Red Sox kept up the attack in the top of the sixth. Ellsbury led off, as in the fifth, with a base on balls. Victorino singled to center. Pedroia singled into center, scoring Ellsbury.

Ortiz grounded a single off shortstop Villar, as Victorino dashed for home. Villar’s throw to the plate was wild; Victorino scored, with Ortiz getting to second base on the error and Pedroia taking third.

After the Astros ran down Pedroia between third and home on Mike Napoli’s grounder to second, Jose Cisnero relieved Keuchel. Pinch-hitting for Carp, Jonny Gomes hit Cisnero’s second pitch for a three-run homer into the seats in left field. The score was 13-7, with Boston racking up back-to-back five-run innings.

Houston replied with two runs, taking advantage of four consecutive one-out singles, RBIs earned by Grossman and Altuve (the latter on a productive groundout). With the Red Sox’ lead down to 13-9, Drake Britton took over for Workman and struck out Castro.

Boston having batted around in both the first and sixth, Ellsbury led off for the third inning in a row and, rather than walk this time, he homered into the second deck in right field. It was his second home run of the game, bookending the two bases on balls.

In between walks to Victorino and Ortiz, Pedroia popped up to second base. Josh Zeid, making his fourth appearance in the big leagues, relieved Cisnero to pitch to Napoli. He walked Napoli, and the bases were loaded. Gomes singled to left, and the Red Sox had their 15th run of the game. Drew grounded to third baseman Matt Dominguez, who threw home for a force out at the plate. Lavarnway struck out for the third out; the Red Sox were one batter short of batting around for a third consecutive inning.

The bullpens cooled off the pace after that. Britton pitched Boston’s first one-two-three inning of the game in the seventh. Zeid retired the Red Sox in order in the eighth, for Houston’s first clean inning since the first.

Jake Elmore, who had come in to replace Villar at shortstop in the sixth, hit a solo homer off Britton in the eighth to cap the scoring. Rubby de la Rosa – in his third season in the majors but making his first appearance for the Red Sox – got the final three outs in the ninth, finishing the game with two strikeouts.

The Red Sox had won the game, 15-10 after being down 5-0. The first four batters in the order were a combined 11-for-18, though the RBI leader was Gomes, with four, despite coming into the game after five innings. Ellsbury scored four times.

The last-place 2012 Red Sox had won only 69 games all year long (they finished 69-93). This August 6 win was Boston’s 69th of the season, with 47 games to go. 

Workman got the win, by being in the right place at the right time during 4? innings of relief, despite giving up six earned runs and seeing his ERA jump from 3.54 to 5.04.  

The pinch-hit home run by Gomes in the sixth inning was his fourth pinch-hit homer of the 2013 season. The team as a whole had seven – one by Ortiz on July 5 against the Angels and the other two by the batter Gomes had pinch-hit for in this game, Mike Carp. The two Carp homers were on May 1 at Toronto and September 12 at Tampa Bay. Only one of the seven was hit at Fenway Park – the one by Gomes on July 3. His other two pinch-hit homers were at Toronto on April 30 and May 30 in Philadelphia. The Red Sox single-season record (five pinch-hit homers) was set by Joe Cronin in 1943. The only other Red Sox player with four was Del Wilber in 1953.

Boston’s strange-but-true journey to victory enabled the Red Sox to extend their lead over Tampa Bay to 1½ games, as the Rays lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks. Another comeback win in the series finale on August 7, coupled with a Tampa Bay loss, gave Boston a 2½-game lead, its largest since July 19.6

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Laura Peebles 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 Rick Bush for access to Houston newspapers. Some highlights of the game can be seen on YouTube.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/HOU/HOU201308060.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B08060HOU2013.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky-3TbAxwck

Notes

1 As it happened, it was Wright’s final appearance of the 2013 season. He had been 2-0 with a 3.65 ERA coming into the game. His career lasted seven years in the majors, all with the Red Sox, and he was an All-Star in 2016 with a record of 13-6.

2 Peter Abraham, “Ellsbury Leads Sox Slugfest,” Boston Globe, August 7, 2013: C1.

3 Gene Duffey, “Lavarnway Finds Redemption Following Wild First,” MLB.com, August 7, 2013, https://www.mlb.com/news/red-sox-catcher-ryan-lavarnway-ties-big-league-record-with-four-passed-balls/c-56093818.

4 Jose de Jesus Ortiz, “No Lead Is Safe for Lyles and Bullpen,” Houston Chronicle, August 7, 2013: C1.

5 The first two also involved knuckeball pitchers: Geno Petralli of the Texas Rangers in September 1987 (catching Charlie Hough) and Ray Katt of the New York Giants in September 1954 (catching Hoyt Wilhelm). Two records that would be tough to top in twenty-first-century baseball are the career 763 passed balls allowed by Pop Snyder whose career ran from 1873-1891) and the 114 allowed in just one season by Columbus Buckeyes catcher Rudy Kemmler, a record that has stood since 1883. 

6 The Rays tied the Red Sox briefly in the standings later in August, but Boston pulled away in September and won the AL East by 5½ games before going on to win the AL pennant and World Series.