The Boston Red Sox will look to avoid back-to-back home losses Wednesday night when they face the Baltimore Orioles in the second contest of a three-game series.
The Baltimore offense, which struggled in losses to the Pittsburgh Pirates on Saturday and Sunday, collected 13 hits during a 7-1 win over Boston on Tuesday in the series opener. Colton Cowser led the way with two doubles and four RBIs.
“Came up a couple times with people on,” Cowser said. “Previously this season I’ve had a couple opportunities to capitalize and haven’t done so. Really just trying to do my job there and get some RBIs.”
Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman and Cedric Mullins each added two hits for the Orioles, who scored four runs over the final three innings.
“I love to tack on runs,” Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said. “That’s something we’ve talked a lot about. That’s something we can definitely be better on from last year. Make it a little bit easier on ourselves later in the game. Once we got the lead, (we) continued to score, continued to put pressure on.
“Even though we didn’t have our best baserunning day today, we made a lot of things happen. Great to see some of our guys get multiple-hit games.”
The Orioles reportedly are calling up prized infielder Jackson Holliday on Wednesday. Holliday, the top overall pick of the 2022 MLB Draft, is batting .333 with two homers and nine RBIs in 10 games with Triple-A Norfolk.
Boston was limited to two hits and struck out 10 times in Tuesday’s loss. The Red Sox also made two errors that led to three unearned runs.
“It’s just a bad game, we have to throw it out, come back to work tomorrow and be ready,” Boston manager Alex Cora said. “For us to get our goal, we have to play good defense. … We have to be better than that.”
Nick Pivetta originally was scheduled to be Boston’s starting pitcher on Wednesday, but the team announced before Tuesday’s game that the right-hander was placed on the 15-day injured list with a right elbow flexor strain. Pivetta allowed one run on eight hits and struck out 13 over his first two starts of the season.
Right-hander Kutter Crawford (0-0, 0.84 ERA) is slated to start on Wednesday. He is 0-1 with a 10.24 ERA in three career appearances (two starts) vs. Baltimore.
Crawford will be opposed by Orioles left-hander Cole Irvin (0-1, 7.20), who is 0-1 with a 4.08 ERA in five games (two starts) against Boston.
Outfielder Austin Hays wasn’t in Baltimore’s starting lineup Tuesday. He is mired in an 0-for-19 stretch and is 2-for-26 with two RBIs this season. Cowser replaced Hays in left field.
“Just a little bit overaggressive right now,” Hyde said of Hays. “Just try to slow him down a little bit right now. We have a lot of confidence in Austin. He’s going to get it going. He had kind of an interrupted spring training where he didn’t get a ton of stadium at-bats, and I don’t know if that carried over into the start of the year or not.
“I know he feels good right now physically and said he’s seeing the ball well, but it’s just not happening early on in the season so far. But we’re confident he’s going to get it going.”
–Field Level Media
