On a Saturday night with the highest stakes, Justin Slaten’s big-league career began.
With his team leading 4-2, Red Sox reliever Joely Rodriguez claimed the bottom of the 10th inning. Due to a back injury that has bothered him since spring training, closer Kenley Jansen was not available.
The automatic runner from second was scored by a jamshot over third base, reducing the Sox’s lead to just one run. Later on, Wilyer Abreu mishandled a Josh Rojas single, which allowed Rojas to advance to second. Then, with runners at first and third and a sense of victory beginning to spread across the T-Mobile Park crowd after they had been so united in opposition to losing, leadoff hitter J.P. Crawford grounded out to Sox second baseman Enmanuel Valdez. Luke Raley, sprinting on contact with the infield, slid under Connor Wong’s tag at the plate without incident.
Slaten took his turn. Cora called him from the bullpen and told him, “You’re a big leaguer now,” like he does every time a player makes their major league debut.
Without a question, Slaten was a big league player. Julio Rodriguez was on the other side of him, so he would have to earn this right away. However, Rodriguez crushed the Red Sox 4-3 with a single to right-center field for the walk-off victory.
Following the game, Cora said, “We’re a little short, but that’s an excuse.”
In all of baseball, Seattle boasts one of, if not the best, pitching staffs. It was evident in his performance against Logan Gilbert, who pitched seven innings and gave up only one run on four hits while striking out eight.
Gilbert’s four-seamer, which averaged about 95 miles per hour, was the first to set the tone with his fastball and torment the Sox. After four innings, he gave up just one hit, a Rafaela single that fell inside the right-field line in the second inning. In that time, Gilbert faced 14 hitters, retiring 12 of them. With the Sox growing acclimated to the fastball, Gilbert altered his strategy in the middle of the appearance, using his slider both early and late in the count. Gilbert would adjust whenever the Red Sox appeared to establish a rhythm with him.
Triston Casas, who went 0 for 3 with a strikeout on the evening, remarked, “We’re running into a buzzsaw in that starting rotation.” They live up to the hype. Even in the middle of the game, there would have been very little momentum without [Rafael Devers’s] home run on Thursday. Gilbert was doing the exact same thing as [George] Kirby, who threw a pretty nice game yesterday, only Gilbert was occasionally throwing three different kinds of breaking balls for strikes.
Despite an undeserved run scored in the first, Kutter Crawford managed to keep his club in the game. In the fifth, Reyes grounded out and scored an RBI, giving the Sox their first lead.
Conversely, Crawford leaned into his cutter and sweeper, eliminating the aggression of a team that drools over the fastball.
It performed.
After six innings, Crawford gave up three hits, struck out seven, walked none, and gave up one unearned run on 84 pitches.
Crawford remarked, “That was kind of the game plan there.” From an analytical perspective, they performed fairly well when hitting the fastball. Thus, we were aware that we would spin them early. Near the end, I started pitching backwards there more, and it worked out.
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