The Red Sox are up 7-1 after five innings, though Josh Beckett can count himself lucky to have dodged both runs and balls in a line-drive filled bottom half.
David Ortiz once again showed that he was suffering from no undue rust following his time in the boot, knocking a double into right to start the inning. Jed Lowrie laid down a sacrifice bunt, and Carl Crawford’s lineout to right was deep enough to score him from third and give Boston their seventh run of the night.
For the Rangers, the bottom of the inning represented their best chance so far to really put some runs up on Beckett and maybe claw their way back into things, putting David Murphy and Endy Chavez on base with a couple of singles before an out was recorded. But then Beckett got lucky. Not so much because Omar Quintanilla popped up, but because Ian Kinsler and Elvis Andrus both laced line drives and got not a single run because of it. The first went straight back at Beckett, who threw up a glove in defense and had the ball run right into it for the out. The second one made its way to Dustin Pedroia, who made the catch and then left the game to get some rest with the big lead.