Game 3: Red Sox 2 Cincinnati 3 (1-2)

Briefly Bad Relief and Big Flies

- a traditional 1 PMish start — now THIS feels like opening day, because, you know, the game is going to be played entirely during the day, not in the twilight. The fans look like they’re in mid-summer form…right down to empty seats apparent in all sections. I realize it’s March, but still — can’t sell out opening weekend?

- Yoshida in the lineup in LF, and Roman Anthony as DH. Cedanne gets the day off, at least for now. Cora is as good as his word, getting Masa into some defensive reps and using his five men for four slots rotation. 

- I would be remiss not to mention Payton Tolle on the season debut of Connelly Early. Only room for one on the roster, and Tolle seems to have a few more things to work out at AAA. But Tolle looks like a pitcher: the dude is a mountain, and is a cut-up to boot. Early looks like he could get blown off the mound by a small gust. That’s a complete illusion — he’s 6’ 3”, 195 officially — because he’s young and relatively short for a modern pitcher. (Tolle is six-six and weighs, I dunno, six hundred sixty pounds.) 

- Early is number 71. The only other Red Sox to have worn this number during the regular season was Cam Booser in 2024, the then 31-year old rookie. I remember him entirely for his name: he sounds like a secondary character in a Sam O’Neill vehicle.

- both Early and Lowder, the Reds’ pitcher, look comfortable, but not dominant in the first three innings. 
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- Looking like the Sox got a lecture from somebody about the ABS; through three there have been some close ones that they have declined to challenge, although of course, it’s a better-called game with whatshisname being the dish than CB Bucknor. Yes, I could look him up, but as I noted in yesterday’s game, a good umpire is defined by not knowing what 

- Duran’s single in the top of the fourth really should have been an error, but again the official scoring is so biased towards the home team, wherever you go, they’re always going to give their guy the benefit of a doubt — unless it’s their pitcher.

- And Wilyer bombs again! Now two earned runs on Lowder’s jacket. The afternoon shutout is broken. Glad to have broken through in the middle third of the game.

- Masa walks for the second time, he’s definitely looking “hitterish” but despite my obsession with OBP I will be happy to see him make some loud contact at some point.

- Did I speak too soon about the ABS Challenges? Mayer loses one to end the inning in the 4th.  OK so a 3-2 inning ending call is a better time to call for it, but that was just a really good pitch, not a bad call. The outside bottom corner is a pitcher’s spot and the batter has the worst perspective on this. I think Marcelo was fooled by the catcher’s mitt in motion, but the ump wasn’t.  Nobody likes to be called out, especially on 3-2. I can see that some coaching is still in the offing about judgement about when and where to use the challenges.

- Sal Stewart advanced from first to second on a  deep flyout with one out. This is another of those minor innovations in “unwritten rules” that may have escaped fans a little less longer in the tooth than I. You’d just never see this in previous decades, perhaps rarely with a true speedster on first base and a ball that while deep is an obvious out. I’d’ve gotten benched in high school or college if I’d tried that, with my slow feet. But it’s a good play — you really rarely see a guy getting thrown out. I don’t know if the coaching at first base has been refined, or players are just smarter, but I think it’s just a matter that the conventional wisdom in years past was to never risk an out like that advancing to second base. 

- Early getting into a little light trouble in the fourth with runners on first and third and one out.

- Contreras with a sweet DP to end the inning and save a run! Steps on first for the force and throws to Story in time to make the tag out. We have our official second Run Saving Defensive Play of the season. Contreras hardly looks like a converted catcher at all; he showed veteran chops in only his second season playing there. One is tempted to go off on a discussion of a parallel universe where Rafael Devers willingly converted to 1B after Casas’ injury last year. I won’t, but I do note Casas’ injury was May 2nd, and Devers had six weeks before being traded in mid-June, after a month of grousing about Bregman taking his job at third.

- Batter’s balk! I thought Roman was going to challenge that pitch! But no, he just has the habit of adjusting his helmet. It’s only a matter of time before the ump misinterprets this, and I am looking forward to the minor brouhaha that will follow. 

- Will and Dave are having a really nice time talking about their defensive challenges making plays in the broadcast booth, following a muffed play just before the end of the top of the fifth (Dave claims he was impeded by his stick mike). I don’t mind diversions like this at all; diversions about golf, steakhouses, and March Madness pools, though, I bitterly resent. It’s one of the gifts of Red Sox baseball coverage that these non-baseball digressions rarely happen compared to other broadcast teams for virtually any other market.

- Early, #71, starts the fifth with 71 pitches. He looks good still, it will be interesting to see how long they leave him out there. Third time through the order, but this is where the idiotic Win rule rears its ugly head; while I don’t think the Sox are particularly guilty of this, leaving the pitcher in to qualify for the win is a hazard at this particular juncture. It’s a good thing it’s not his first major league start, or the temptation for a “good story” might be there. 

The rule has been an enemy of pitching innovation. While we have quicker hooks with openers and such in recent years, there’s still quite a bit of pivot around getting to 5 IP for a starter, I think entirely due to the win rule. If it didn’t exist in its weird nether world of one rule for starting pitchers, one for everybody else, we’d never see the fifth inning as having particular significance for the starter. You can give up ten runs in five and still qualify for a win if your team has 11 going into the 6th. That happens! 

So, smarty pants, what would I propose instead? Baseball won’t abandon the win rule, but it can modify it to allow the scorer to pick the winner on the same basis as a win where the starter doesn’t qualify, namely a subjective assessment of who pitches best to contribute in a win. It’s very rare the scorer doesn’t pick the pitcher who is in the game when his team takes a lead that they do not relinquish, but it does happen sometimes, usually when the pitching is terrible in the end game, and even then it’s a source of some controversy. But it’s a far better standard than the supposedly objective rule concerning the starter qualifying. 

- 88 pitches through five, that has to be it for Connelly, but a really nice outing. He clearly wasn’t on a particular pitch count per se.

- The Reds pull Lowder to start the sixth at 86 pitches.

- Challenge on a 3-2 pitch by the Reds! The catcher sees this ball so well, but the Reds lose it by a tenth of an inch. The Sox and Reds are oh for two, but the umpire — still don’t know his name, thank god — is two for two. 

We are going to get a new metric of umpire quality this year — umpires who have the most unsuccessful challenges against them are almost by definition being better judges of balls and strikes than pitchers, catchers, and hitters all in there with them. We can look at this both as a percentage and as an absolute number of “umpire validations”. 

- Oooh Wilyer HAMMERS another one into he gap in left center, off the fence, about as far as you can hit it as a lefty without going out in terms of linear feet.  And against a lefty!  It’s “only” a double but about as satisfying as a two out bases empty double can be. But he's left stranded.

- Did I say Early wasn’t on a pitch count? He’s starting the 6th inning!  With the heart of the Reds’ lineup coming up. I’m sure AC sees match ups I am not aware of, but that is an unusual statement of confidence at this time of year. 

- oopsie, Matt McLain, who had a simply scorching spring, hits the third pitch of the inning over Abreu’s head. But Wilyer fields is so smoothly it holds McClain (who has wheels) to first base. I just love this guy so much: he is the complete package, and having true gold glove defense in right field, in Fenway in particular, is just great. I saw a graphic that he had something like 32 defensive runs saved last year, and he missed some time last year.  

- Catchers’ challenge! But Connor Wong goes 1 for 1 on the year, gutsy as hell, but great challenge! Great because it was successful.  Team 1 for 2.

- WHAT  A GREAT OUTING BY EARLY! He blows it by EDC to whiff him a second time. Leaving with 96 fans…the radio makes the number of Red Sox fans at the GABP evident. On TV he’s getting a standing ovation from the third base side! That’s simply amazing.

- On comes Weissert, who had a bit of a rough start to his season, giving up two hits and a run yesterday in that excruciating loss in The ABS Game. This presumably would be a 2/3 of an inning outing. On paper we have a great 6-7-8-9 inning bullpen sequence, but as the opening link in that chain, Weissert is the weakest one. 

- Sal Stewart, despite apparently being one of those wide-eyed, I’m-god’s-gift-to-baseball personalities, definitely has great strike zone judgement for a rookie. 

- CB Bucknor manages to blow a call umpiring from third. OK, maybe according to replay he got it right, but it was close enough I can revisit my grievances from yesterday. His is now the only umpire’s name that’s been mentioned since the first pitch.

Nice play by Durbin, by the bye, even though it doesn’t count.

- DAMMIT. Giant three-run homer by, of course, Eugenio Suarez. Game of inches. And we’re behind and Early’s great outing is ruined. Sox down 2-3. Weissert left that pitch up, a real room service ball for Suarez to  launch.

- Weissert makes a fantastic pitch for a called third strike on the next batter, but that isn’t quite atonement. 
I’m trying to calculate his ERA — 3 earned runs (plus the inherited runner that counts against Early’s line) — is it 27.00? Something like that, at least before the inning ends on a flyout.

- OK so we’re resetting here to a one run deficit going into the last third of the game. Getting into the scientific part of the game, per the early 20th century use of the term: single runners and runs are huge, sacrifices are in play, matchups from the bullpen are assessed one batter at a time.

- Did I mention the idiocy of the way the Win rule is applied? If the Sox score two runs in the top of the 7th, and hold the lead, Weissert would be in line for the conventional wisdom win. But the scorer is not obliged to give it to him. By rule the scorer couldn’t give it to Early at this point. Vulture wins don’t show up on the pitchers’ lines as such.

- So…no pinch hitter for Masa, leading off against a lefty. Prove AC a genius here, Masa.

Nope, AC doesn’t get his Genius Point. He instead gets his first Questionable Manager Call of the year as Yoshida grounds out on a 3-2 pitch. 

- Mid-inning pitching change as AC pinch hits with Monasterio and the Reds counter with a righty. Weird sequence there, I would’ve expected the move-countermove to have been on Yoshida’s AB.

- OOOOH that would have been a good place for an ABS challenge, if it weren’t the last one. 

- I really like Monasterio (who flies to right in his Sox debut, oppo field), I suspect AC’s logic here was to get him into the first series as much as the game matchup. Presumably he’ll take over for Marcelo in the field.

- Wow, Connor Wong reaches out and golfs one out of the zone and the bloop just keeps flying and one-hops the fence in left center! Dave speculating it’s wind-aided. But you know what, you put the ball in play, good things happen. Now we have Roman up with a runner in scoring position. 

- Wong at second base pictured next to Elly De La Cruz, looks like he’s the kid in a father-son day. Connor is no Jose Altuve — he’s 5-10, the intertubes tell me — but he’s nearly as slight of frame as EDC, who I think is seven foot eleven. OK, maybe not, but he’s really tall and skinny.  

- Challenge by the Reds on an outside ball: successful. Now 1-2 instead of 2-1, this seems reasonably high leverage, but gutsy to maybe use that last challenge in the 7th. 

- Roman gets ahold of one, but just off the end of the bat and the inning is over. 

- My first peek of the day at Fangraphs’ Win Probability, and we’re down to 22%. We were as high as 79% going into the sixth. 

Maybe change of win probability during a pitcher’s outing ought to be the replacement metric for determining a Win.

- Jovani Moran comes into the game, leaving, I think, Oviedo as the only member of the bullpen who hasn’t appeared yet in 2026. Great inning — eight pitches for three outs, if one of them was a bit of loud contact, it worked out.

- Checking my work: yes, as of this moment, the only Red Sox who haven’t appeared this year are Oviedo and the next two starters in the rotation, Suarez and Bello. 

- Tony Santillan in for the Reds to start the 8th. He didn’t look too good yesterday, walking two, except when he did, striking out the side otherwise.

- Santillan Slings a Slurve. Sweeper, Slider, Slurve: I guess I can recognize the difference in the arc of the ball, but I cannot tell you the line between them that distinguishes each pitch. I am going to have to research my grips after the game. In any event he whiffs Story on one, Santillan Swlings Slurve, Story Strikeout.

- Oh dear. 3-2 pitch, second throw to first, they catch Jarren leaning. You can’t do that until the two throws over have been exhausted.  How big is the pickoff? The Win Probability plummets from 27% to 17%. This proves to be Santillan’s first career major league pickoff. Helluva time.

- Contreras walks, making it sting all the more. But our hero of the weekend, such as we have one, Wilyer Abreu coming to the plate. He promptly rifles one into the gaps and the centerfielder makes a nice stab at it but the ball pops out. I call that a hit but it’s one of those marginal calls I’d be fine with either way. First and third and two outs. Duran would’ve been home, of course, easily.

- OK Caleb Durbin, no time like the present to etch your name into the Red Sox Hall of Immortals. Big AB. Santillan is up to 25 pitches, is wild, and we are sooooo close here. 

Durbin takes a 3-0 pitch for a called strike, and then swings at ball four, running the count full with two outs. And Durbin…whiffs on an unhittable pitch that was also probably out of the zone low and away, but a lot closer than the 3-1 pitch. That was a serious corkscrew of a swing, a little Bugs Bunny vibe.

The win probability on that pitch dropped from 27% to 14%. 

- I wonder if we’ll see Moran out for a second inning, given he only threw 8 pitches and the game situation is what it is. We have a travel day to Houston ahead of us and an 8 PM (ET) start.

And indeed he comes out to start the inning. 

- Sal Stewart whacks another double with two outs — this kid is full of himself, but has reason to be so. 7 for 10 on the year with an OPS of…2.069! Because when he’s not hitting he’s walking. Early, obviously, but he’s Rookie of the Year right now.

And of course Eugenio Suarez is up. Mount visit from Andrew Bailey — is this the first non-replacement mound visit of the year? I didn’t pay close enough attention but I think it is. Likely telling the kid he has a base open and a somewhat less fearsome hitter in Spencer Steer on deck. And he indeed walks him on a 3-2 count. I do not disapprove of this approach to Suarez.

- Steer flies out, so while it’s not an AC Genius Point, or an Andrew Bailey Genius Point, I detect good decision-making there and execution from Moran. Brownie Points for all three.

- On to the 9th, and the Reds’ closer, Pagan, is out again, with Yoshida leading off. Pagan did, it should be noted, blow the save yesterday on Abreu’s homer. 

This game feels like it really zipped along, but that’s not the case: we’re at 3 hours and ten minutes to start the ninth. 

Lazy flyout to left.

Monasterio gets his second AB of the game and season, and he makes a beautiful rip down the left field line to put the tying run on second with one out.  Cedanne pinch hitting for Connor Wong.

Oh rats, he got a little under one and flies out. With two outs, but here’s Roman Anthony coming to the plate. This already feels like a classic situation. Roman Anthony is exactly who you’d want up, I think. And Anthony gets an intentional pass on a 3-0 count.

Now it’s Trevor’s chance, with the go-ahead run now on first base.

Ugly first pitch swing ends the game on a pop up to CF.  (Dave says he “just missed” but that’s not what i saw — he was ahead of the pitch against a guy who was struggling a bit the last two days.) I guess the Genius Point goes to Tito Francona on this one.

And like that we’re on a losing streak, three games into the season. Although we outscored the Reds by one run in the series, it feels like we lost by a lot more, somehow. We could easily have swept this series with two or three different plays.

Takeaways: The long balls tell the tale today. Really nice start by Connor Early ruined by bad relief.  Wilyer Abreu looks locked in at 3 for 4 but he’s now had four XBH in two losses… we’d frankly have looked even worse without him. Weissert is the goat, not the GOAT giving up the three run blast for the Reds’ only scoring. Duran’s getting picked off was another turning point in a possible comeback, with Durbin failing to connect with the tying run on third killing the 8th inning rally. Moran was excellent in late relief, a tiny silver lining. 

The home town team looks rough: it’s not bad play so much as the cylinders backfiring at inopportune times. With a tough Houston club up next and the back of the rotation up next, I hope the agony doesn’t extend.