The Red Sox were short in their bullpen Wednesday. Both right-handed relievers Josh Winckowski and Chris Martin were unavailable for the final game of a three-game series in Seattle.
Boston could have used one more inning from starting pitcher Kutter Crawford who tossed 5 scoreless frames. But manager Alex Cora didn’t consider bringing the 27-year-old righty back out for the sixth inning with a 3-0 lead. He instead replaced Crawford with reliever John Schreiber who gave up four runs in 1-plus innings. The Red Sox lost 6-3 to the Mariners to finish their West Coast road trip with a 2-4 record.
“I mean, 80-something pitches, he had to grind. So we went to one of our best relievers,” Cora said about his decision to remove Crawford.
Crawford threw 81 pitches (55 strikes). He allowed four hits and one walk while striking out five over his five scoreless innings.
“Physically, I felt good,” Crawford said. “I wanted to go more but they thought it was the best decision to take me out there and bring (Schreiber) in. Our bullpen’s been doing a great job all year. This was just one of them days. But I think we have all the confidence in our bullpen to shut things down.”
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Schreiber gave up a two-run homer to Cal Raleigh in the sixth inning, narrowing Boston’s lead to 3-2.
“It’s was one of those days that there were certain guys that were down,” Cora said. “We tried to go with John. That was a good at-bat there (from Raleigh). The guy just killed us the whole season. Got a pitch down in the zone, hit it out of the ballpark. Then after that, we have to think about matchups and all that. And it just didn’t work out.”
Cora made another interesting decision to bring back Schreiber to begin the seventh inning after the righty had given up the two-run blast to Raleigh in the sixth. Schreiber walked No. 7 hitter Dominic Canzone, then gave up a single to Tom Murphy before being removed.
“Lefty matchups were coming,” Cora said about sticking with Schreiber to start the seventh. “So at that point, where we were bullpen-wise, it made sense. Just didn’t work out.”
Lefty Richard Bleier replaced Schreiber. Bleier allowed a game-tying single to left-handed pinch hitter Cade Marlowe. He struck out left-handed hitting J.P. Crawford, then Julio Rodriguez’s RBI infield single put the Mariners ahead for good. Shortstop Yu Chang and third baseman Rafael Devers collided trying to make the play on Rodriguez’s grounder.
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Crawford said his start went “pretty good for the most part.”
“I think towards the end I kind of lost a little bit of feel for my mechanics, which led me to get into little bit deeper counts and not get guys out so quickly. But overall, I felt pretty good out there,” he said.
