October 4, 2013: Red Sox pounce on Rays in Game One as momentum sputters for Tampa Bay

The Tampa Bay Rays finished second in the American League East division in 2013, 5½ games behind the Boston Red Sox. They wrapped up the season with seven games in three different cities. The third stop on their road trip had been Arlington, Texas, for a wild-card tiebreaker game on September 30, in which they beat the Texas Rangers, 5-2.

That win earned the Rays the right to travel to a fourth city – Cleveland – to face off against the Indians on October 2 in the AL Wild Card Game. Alex Cobb started and the Rays shut out Cleveland, 4-0, in what was Tampa Bay’s “second win-or-go-home road victory in three days.”1

Even with all the stress involved, the Rays had won 10 of their last 12 games. Manager Joe Maddon declared that his players “deserve a lot of credit. Moving forward, I want to believe it’s going to create some kind of different form of momentum going into this series.”2

That win set the Rays up to go against Boston in the American League Division Series. The Red Sox had clinched the division title on September 20, going “worst to first” after 2012’s fifth-place division finish. The Rays had faced the Red Sox 19 times in the regular season in 2013, with a 7-12 record. Three of Boston’s wins were walk-offs, including April 15 at Fenway Park, a game that concluded minutes before the tragic bombing at the Boston Marathon’s finish line.3 The Rays had won four of the last six outings, though, and felt good about their chances.4

John Farrell, the Red Sox manager, named his starter for the Friday afternoon first game of the ALDS – left-hander Jon Lester (15-8, 3.75). Lester had won five of his last six decisions, losing only a 3-2 game in late August. He was also the father of a son born just the week before, on September 28.5

Maddon chose a left-hander, too, in Matt Moore, an All-Star in 2013 with a record of 17-4 (3.29).

Lester struck out the first three batters he faced, and the first batter in the top of the second. After a popup to second base for the second out in the second, Lester thought he had also struck out left fielder Sean Rodríguez but didn’t get the call. On the next pitch, Rodríguez hit a long home run atop the Green Monster wall in left-center and almost out of Fenway Park.

Moore. whose 17 wild pitches had led the league, hit Shane Victorino (who later stole second) in the first inning. He followed a two-out walk with a wild pitch in the second but kept the Red Sox scoreless.

Both pitchers retired their respective opposing sides in the third inning.

Second baseman Ben Zobrist boosted the Rays’ lead to 2-0 with a leadoff home run in the top of the fourth, high up but just inside the left-field foul pole. Lester allowed a walk and a single later in the inning but there was no further scoring.

Moore hadn’t allowed a hit in the game through the first three innings, but the Red Sox bats got to work in the bottom of the fourth. Dustin Pedroia singled off the mound and into center field. David Ortiz hit a high fly ball to deep right field. Wil Myers “drifted back, extended his right hand as if to brace himself for contact with the bullpen wall, and stopped his pursuit of the ball … dropped his head and started back toward the infield, apparently confident that center fielder Desmond Jennings was going to catch the ball.”6

The problem was that Jennings was not particularly close. The ball, which could easily have been caught, bounced off the warning track and into the Red Sox bullpen for a ground-rule double.

One misplay does not determine an entire ballgame, particularly one that does not produce a run while your team retains a two-run lead. But one might not know that by looking at newspaper coverage of this game. The Tampa Bay Times devoted one full column to Myers’ failure to catch the ball, and no fewer than three Boston Globe articles featured the play in either a subhead or their first paragraph.7 Myers was a rookie who hit .293, playing in 88 games, and drove in 53 runs.

One out later, Jonny Gomes doubled high off the wall in left to bring in the two runners and tie the game. Jarrod Saltalamacchia struck out. Stephen Drew singled to the first baseman and hustled to reach safely before the pitcher could effectively cover, while Gomes scored all the way from second.

Will Middlebrooks doubled to left, the ball taking an unusual carom off the top of the scoreboard and getting by left fielder Rodríguez. Third-base coach Brian Butterfield waved Drew around third for the fourth run. Jacoby Ellsbury swung and missed for strike three, but the ball glanced off catcher Jose Lobaton’s glove for a passed ball and Ellsbury reached with Middlebrooks going to third. Boston upped the lead to 5-2 when Victorino singled past first base and into right field. The Sox had batted around. Pedroia made the final out. No errors were assessed to Rays fielders, but there were four missed defensive opportunities that had eluded them.8

Lester faced three batters and none reached base in the fifth. Moore was still pitching in the bottom of the inning. Mike Napoli doubled into the left-field corner with one out, just barely making it safely to second, and Gomes was walked intentionally. Saltalamacchia doubled halfway up the wall in left to score both runners and make it 7-2.

Maddon called on Wesley Wright to take over from Moore. He struck out Drew and walked Middlebrooks intentionally, but Ellsbury hit a ball so hard that it glanced off Wright’s glove and bounded in the air all the way into left field. That drove in Saltalamacchia and sent Middlebrooks to second base. With Ellsbury’s shot, every member of the Red Sox already had a hit and it was still only the fifth inning. Chris Archer relieved Wright. Victorino singled to load the bases, but Pedroia struck out swinging.

Not a single batter for either team reached base in the sixth inning or the seventh. Lester pitched both innings for Boston. Archer pitched the sixth for Tampa Bay, and Alex Torres pitched the seventh.

After having retired 11 Rays in a row, Lester walked Rays first baseman James Loney in the top of the eighth. He struck out his seventh man, Lobaton, but then walked center fielder Jennings. After Zobrist flied out, Farrell called in Junichi Tazawa to close out the inning. He did, when Wil Myers flied out to right field.

The Red Sox added four more runs in the bottom of the eighth, with Jamey Wright their victim. Ellsbury singled to left. With Victorino batting, he stole second. A few pitches later, Victorino singled to left field and drove in Ellsbury. Pedroia lined a single into center, Victorino going first to third. Ortiz took a six-pitch walk. With the bases loaded, Napoli walked, forcing in Victorino. Gomes grounded into a 6-3 double play, but Pedroia came in the back door with Boston’s 11th run. Saltalamacchia singled to right and Ortiz scored.

Drew hit a grounder back to the pitcher, who threw to first for the final out, but it was 12-2, Red Sox. Tampa Bay’s momentum seemed to have run out.

Ryan Dempster came on in the ninth to close out the 10-run lead. He faced three consecutive pinch-hitters. The second of them – Kelly Johnson – tripled to center field, but Dempster struck out two and then got Yunel Escobar to ground out, second to first.

It was a team effort on offense. Every player in the Red Sox lineup had at least one base hit (Victorino had three), every player had at least one run scored (Pedroia, Ortiz, and Gomes each had two), and every player had a run batted in – except Dustin Pedroia and the team leader in regular-season RBIs, David Ortiz. Gomes and Victorino each had two, and Saltalamacchia had three in the first playoff game of his career.

Lester had allowed just three base hits (two of them home runs) in his 7⅔ innings of work. He had walked three. “He started the season as the ace,” wrote the Globe’s Nick Cafardo, “and he still is the ace.”9

The Red Sox had won the first game of the American League Division Series. Both teams looked ahead to a 5:30 game on Saturday afternoon in which John Lackey would square off against Tampa Bay’s David Price.

“That’s just one game, baby,” said Joe Maddon. We’ll be back tomorrow. I promise you, we’ll be ready to play. We will not be affected mentally by this game.”10

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Victoria Monte and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and a video of the game on YouTube. Thanks to Jay Caldwell for supplying Tampa Bay Times newspaper coverage.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201310040.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B10040BOS2013.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFEnC84xNMU

Notes

1 Marc Topkin, “Familiar Feeling,” Tampa Bay Times, October 3, 2013: 1C. Topkin noted that the game in Boston “will be their fourth in four different cities in a six-day span.”

2 Peter Abraham, “Rays Took Wild Ride to Get Back to Fenway,” Boston Globe, October 4, 2013: C10.

3 The other walk-offs were on April 13 and the second game of a June 18 doubleheader.

4 Catcher Jose Molina said of the Red Sox, “It was a really tough year against them early, and we played really good against them late, so I think we’re ready for them.” For Cobb the motivation was simple: “This team,” he said, “nobody wants to go home.” Topkin, “Familiar Feeling.”

5 Nick Cafardo, “He Had Pop Right from the Start,” Boston Globe, October 5, 2012: C4.

6 Dan Shaughnessy, “Things Went Wrong in Right,” Boston Globe, October 5, 2013: C1. Myers had called for the ball, gave Jennings a motion with his hand, but then thought he had seen something out of the corner of his eye and pulled away from a ball that was his to catch. “I should have taken control of the situation,” Myers said. “Really a routine play,” said Maddon. “Very unfortunate.”

7 The Boston Globe even headlined its lead article “Getting the Drop.”

8 Had Rodriguez played the ball off the wall better, Middlebrooks would have been held to a single.

9 Cafardo. The article dwelt on the changes in Lester over the years – beating cancer before the Red Sox World Series win in 2007, and how he had weathered some of the ups and downs in 2013. He was the only Red Sox pitcher to throw more than 200 innings.

10 Peter Abraham, “Getting the Drop,” Boston Globe, October 5, 2013: C1. The Red Sox went on to beat the Rays, three games to one. They advanced to the World Series by beating the Detroit Tigers in the AL Championship Series, four games to two. Boston defeated the St. Louis Cardinals, four games to two, for the eighth World Series championship in franchise history.