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Baseball Today: Thursday, June 14 »
June 13, 2007
BOSTON - Less than a week ago, Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling flirted with history. Last night he fluttered.
Boston’s ace was one out away from tossing a no-hitter against the Oakland A’s last Thursday, but had to settle for a complete-game one-hitter. Unfortunately, he couldn’t carry that momentum into his 14th start of the season last night as Colorado beat up on the Red Sox at Fenway Park, 12-2.
After the loss Schilling was already waiting in the interview room for the media to arrive to discuss his sub-par outing. As he spoke about it, it was clear he was visualizing the game in his head.
“I don’t know if there was one big problem,” he said. “I had a manageable and winnable game there in the fifth and the three-run homer (by Rockies’ Brad Hawpe) put it out of reach.”
Ask any player and they’ll tell you they play one game at a time. They don’t let a previous game or an upcoming game factor into the here and now. Schilling said the almost no-hitter in Oakland was not on his mind.
“It was a downer because we lost,” he said. “Every fifth day it’s a new game. I certainly wanted to build on it, but I felt I was throwing the ball well early.”
Nothing seemed to be clicking for Schilling last night, which is unusual because heading in the veteran right-hander had lost just once in his previous 12 starts.
“He had some crazy things happen,” said batterymate Jason Varitek. “On the three-run homer the wheels came off a bit, balls found some holes and we didn’t make the pitches we needed to with two outs. They did a good job of hitting with two outs. Right before the three-run homer, he was getting out of it, but he made one mistake. Until that he would left us in the game and capable of coming back.”
After two innings last night he was already up to 51 pitches and allowed three runs. He settled down in the third and fourth, retiring the sides in order in both innings. In the fifth, however, Hawpe almost hit the Prudential Building with a two-out three-run homer, an absolute blast off a change-up, to right field to give Colorado a 6-2 advantage. He closed out his outing with a strikeout as the Rockies scored all six runs (five earned) with two outs.
“We played a sloppy first two innings all around,” said Schilling. “But, we settled in and it was a very winnable game until the fifth. . . I didn’t make that last pitch when I needed to.”
The bullpen wasn’t all that great, too, as it allowed six more runs over the last four innings as Colorado rolled over Boston.
The Sox didn’t help matters much and stranded runners in scoring positions in the middle innings to give Schilling any kind of cushion.
“He’s going to give it up at some point,” said Youkilis. “It was just one of those days. He didn’t have his A-game. He’ll have to bounce back. He didn’t have his A-game before his (almost) no-hitter, so hopefully he can bounce back like that again.”
The rubber match of this three-game set will be Thursday night with Josh Beckett (9-0) facing the Rockies’ Jeff Francis (5-5).
“It was just one of those nights,” said Schilling. “It started off weird. We got it under control and then we just let it get away.”
That was obvious with all the late-inning empty seats at Fenway Park.
With the Red Sox losing and the Yankees winning, Boston’s lead in the A.L. East is the lowest (8 ½ games) since May 16 when it lead by the same amount of games.
--JOE McDONALD
Posted by Corey Bourassa 
at 11:00 PM | Permalink
riron | June 14, 2007 5:22 AM link
I hear the hoofbeats coming on strong