Sox hang 10 on Orioles

Offense comes to rescue after Penny struggles

April 17, 2009|Adam Kilgore, Globe Staff

The Red Sox' offense didn't need warm weather or more time or new players. It needed a challenge. Brad Penny's second-inning implosion last night - three walks, three singles, a grand slam, and seven runs before the second out - should have doomed the Sox before the beer vendor's first case ran out. The touchdown deficit only provoked them.

The Sox, averaging 4.1 runs per game, hung four in the second inning. J.D. Drew hit a solo home run in the third. They tied the Orioles by the fifth, led by the sixth, and notched a madcap, 10-8 victory in front of 38,266 at Fenway Park.

Lowrie might be out for the season if he needs surgery on his left wrist. C5

They forged their first consecutive victories of the year with a second valiant bullpen performance in a week and an offense that recharged Fenway, which had sat dormant for a week.

In the clubhouse afterward, Jason Bay and Dustin Pedroia ate dinner together. Bay looked at Pedroia and said, "We're not really talking about the fact that we were down, 7-0, and we won that game." The remarkable thing about the game was not the seven-run comeback. It was how routine the Red Sox made it feel.

"That's something most guys forgot about, didn't really soak it up yet," Bay said. "At the end, it was no big deal. But that could potentially be a season-changing game in a lot of aspects. Whether it's the offense getting going, whether it's us getting one more win instead of one more loss, it could be a lot of things."

Chatter concerning the demise of Boston's offense, a primary culprit during a 2-6 start, seems premature now after the Sox exploded for at least eight runs for the second straight game. Baltimore's defense, which allowed the three unearned runs that tied the game at 8 and abetted a few more, helped.

Drew and Bay served as the main cogs. Drew hit a home run and a triple, walked three times, and scored three runs. Bay hit a two-run homer and drove in three runs, including the go-ahead run in the sixth on a sacrifice fly to center that plated Pedroia. The Sox put up 10 runs despite David Ortiz and Kevin Youkilis going a combined 0 for 8 with five strikeouts.

"I don't think it's fair to think every guy in our lineup is going to be firing at all times," Bay said. "But we have the ability to have two or three guys not on their games and still put up a lot of runs."

Because Penny's night ended before he recorded an out in the fourth inning, the Sox relied on their bullpen, fresh thanks to Tim Wakefield's complete game Wednesday and a day off Thursday. Manny Delcarmen pitched a career-high 2 2/3 innings. Ramon Ramírez erased Javier Lopez's sixth-inning mess by stranding two runners with one pitch, then mowed through a 1-2-3 seventh.