Pen looks shaky; Sox written off

April 05, 2008|Amalie Benjamin, Globe Staff

TORONTO - Manny Delcarmen figured the score in this personal duel was 3-1.

Having gotten the better of Frank Thomas last season, and having been victimized by the slugger last night, Delcarmen gave himself the edge, but not by much. Turns out he was underestimating his performance.

In the wake of Thomas's two-out, two-run double that broke a seventh-inning tie and propelled the Blue Jays to a 6-3 win over the Red Sox, the miscalculation was understandable. In truth, Thomas was 1 for 7 with three strikeouts against Delcarmen before last night. But even that knowledge probably wouldn't have relieved much of the pain Delcarmen suffered in front of a sellout crowd of 50,171 in the Jays' home opener.

"I keep seeing it as one pitch away the whole time I was up there," Delcarmen said. "One pitch away. That's baseball."

On a night that didn't exactly go as planned for the Sox bullpen, three relievers combined to surrender the game after J.D. Drew's three-run homer tied it in the top of the seventh. David Aardsma entered to start the bottom of the inning and walked David Eckstein on 11 pitches.

Then came Javier Lopez to face Matt Stairs. But Shannon Stewart batted for Stairs and singled off the lefthander, prompting manager Terry Francona to hand the game over to Delcarmen with two on, no outs, and the Blue Jays' 3-4-5 hitters due up. Two foul pop outs to Kevin Youkilis and it was Thomas's turn.

"You just want to go in and try to get the job done," said Delcarmen, who left a changeup up to Thomas. "I got the first two guys out, Vernon Wells and [Alex] Rios, two big outs. Then you have Thomas come up; he's one of the best hitters in the game. Just try to make quality pitches, not make mistakes. I guess I left it up a little bit; he took advantage and hit it in the gap."

For five innings, Boston's Tim Wakefield and Toronto's Shaun Marcum were locked in a scoreless standoff. But Wakefield gave up three runs in the sixth, starting with Stairs's leadoff home run to right. Toronto's surge continued with RBI singles by Lyle Overbay and Aaron Hill, scoring Rios and Thomas, who had both walked. Hill's single was a bit controversial, as the ball came out of the glove of Jacoby Ellsbury after a few steps and a meeting with a lit scoreboard in left-center field.

"It was just one bad inning; luck went their way," Wakefield said. "I thought we had [Thomas, on a pickoff attempt at second]. Dustin [Pedroia] said he tagged him, but the call didn't go our way. That's an inning that they got all the breaks. Popup Manny [Ramírez] lost in the lights, couldn't see it, that ended up scoring a run. The ball Jacoby caught and then ran into the wall and [it] fell out of his glove, scored another run. Just one of those weird plays. The whole inning was that way."