It was supposed to be a pitching duel. It was not.
Kershaw vs Sale pitted two of the best pitchers in the game against each other. They both sucked, but Kershaw sucked harder. Neither made it past 4.0 innings. The final score was 8-4. The coup de grace was delivered by pinch-hitter Eduardo Nunez, who slammed a late three-run homer off Alex Wood, the final Dodgers pitcher.
Boston’s budding superstar, Andrew Benintendi, taunted Kershaw with three hits in four innings. (It’s rare for a lefty to get three hits against Kershaw at all.) Benintendi added a fourth hit later. Pretty heady stuff for a 24-year-old kid. (Don’t the damn Red Sox have enough stars already?)
Because baseball’s rules are not changing as fast as its strategies, the “winning pitcher” stat is starting to become meaningless. This one was “won” by Matt Barnes, who pitched the fifth inning and was not especially effective. (Starting pitchers need to pitch five for a win.) In theory, MLB says, “A starting pitcher must pitch at least five innings (in a traditional game of nine innings or longer) to qualify for the win. If he does not, the official scorer awards the win to the most effective relief pitcher.” There were at least two other middle relievers who pitched better than Barnes. In fact, Barnes pitched rather poorly – a single, then a wild pitch allowing two runners to advance, then a run-scoring grounder. Meanwhile, Joe Kelly faced three guys, got the first two on swinging strikes and induced a weak grounder from the third, and Eovaldi got the heart of the Dodger line-up to sit down 1-2-3 without hitting a ball out of the infield. So how could the scorer rule that Barnes was the “most effective relief pitcher”?