Day games. Postponements. Morning first pitches. The Red Sox have been forced to weather not-your-ordinary schedule to begin the 2021 season.
The awkwardness of the routine showed a bit Sunday when the red-hot Red Sox cooled off in a major way, with the White Sox cruising to a doubleheader sweep of Alex Cora's crew.
With all that in mind, the Red Sox manager had a message for his club heading into Monday morning's series finale.
"I told the guys, just one more day, grind it out one more day," Cora said prior to the Patriots' Day tilt. "It’s tomorrow. It’s a tough one but a cool one. Patriots’ Day and the 11 a.m. start and then Tuesday we reset and everything falls into place as far as your routine, groundballs, extra work and all that so looking forward to it."
The message took root.
The Red Sox punctuated the aforementioned stretch with an 11-4 rout of the White Sox, putting any questions to rest thanks to a six-run first inning against Chicago starter Lucas Giolito.
By the time four innings were complete, the Red Sox had jumped out to a 10-2 lead, having forced Giolito with his shortest start of his career. The budding star hurler finished allowing eight runs over just one inning.
"We didn't hit the way he normally hit over the last two games," Hernandez told NESN after the game, "so somebody had to pay."
When it was all said and done, the best offense in the American League was paced with home runs by Hernandez, J.D. Martinez and Alex Verdugo. Martinez, Verdugo and Christian Vazquez each had three hits apiece.
The other part of the equation was the continued emergence of starter Nathan Eovaldi. The Sox hurler allowed four runs over 6 1/3 innings, but pitched even better than the line would indicate. Eovaldi finished with 10 strikeouts and not a single walk.
"It's good," Cora said of Eovaldi's season to date. "It started with the first start against Baltimore and then the fact that today he threw 100 [pitches] I think it was, but when we got this guy in '18, this is what we envisioned, a guy that was attacking the zone. I do believe that '19 it wasn't fair for him from our standpoint and he was willing to try to do what he tried to do, but going from being a starter to a reliever to a starter again, it's a different mindset and he never got untracked. Last year I saw it, he kept pounding the strike zone with everything. He keeps doing that this year. He preaches that. He's very vocal that we have to pound the strike zone with good stuff. He's been amazing. He's been really good."
And, once again, there was the dominance by Garrett Whitlock.
The rookie came on for his fourth appearance of the season, retiring all eight hitters he faced, fanning a pair. He now has gone nine innings, striking out 11, while allowing three hits and not a single run.
Mr. MVP meet Whitlock pic.twitter.com/sBnS0RiPq7
— Red Sox Stats (@redsoxstats) April 19, 2021
"We talked a little bit about the grind, what we went through in Minnesota, we can say we had an off day in Minnesota, but we actually didn't, we were ready to play and the game got canceled," Cora said after the win. "Then the doubleheaders, and the comeback victories and all that, it takes a lot. Yeah, we only played one the first day, but it was a tough one, doubleheader. We talked a little. We were like, one more day, we have to grind it. Tomorrow it feels like finally the schedule is as close as normal and for them to show up today on a special day here and play that way, that was eye-opening and fun to watch."
