Beckett v. Shields (Game 27)

At least, Alex Cora looks sufficiently embarrassed at having been swept by the Tampa Bay Rays.

For the most part, Beckett did an impeccable job of pitching that game. He went seven innings and struck out thirteen batters. He limited the Rays to four hits and walked only one. In the third inning he did have a pick-off attempt go seriously awry. The base runner had reached on a single to center. Beckett tried twice to pick him off and was pretty close both times-which is probably why he tried a little harder on the third attempt; maybe threw a little bit faster, maybe rushed a little bit to get the throw off. Unfortunately on his third attempt, the throw sailed past Youkilis and up the right field line. It took so long to recover that the runner came around to score. He also gave up a home run to Evan Longoria in the seventh inning.

Manny Del replaced Beckett in the eighth inning. And what did he proceed to do? On his third pitch of the outing, he beaned the Rays shortstop. He struck out the second batter and while he was pitching to the third (Carl Crawford), the runner stole second. Crawford then hit a double up the right field line and the runner came around to score. Crawford attempted to stretch his double into a triple but was tagged out at third for the second out of the inning. The last batter of the inning struck out swinging.

Except for the two errors (on Beckett and Drew), it wasn't a bad game defensively. I suppose it helps that there really weren't that many balls put into play. There were five hits in the air that were caught for outs and three ground balls that were successfully converted into outs.

Then the question is: If the pitching was (for the most part) dominant, then how did they end up losing? The answer comes to us from the Joe Morgan School of obvious-ness: You can't win a game if you don't score any runs and you can't score any runs if you don't hit the ball.