The Red Sox finally managed to defeat the Orioles by a score of 5-1 Monday night, returning to .500 for the first time in weeks and drawing even with the Yankees at the bottom of a stacked AL East.
The win came with no thanks to the man on the mound to start the game for the Red Sox. Clay Buchholz, just four days removed from his only truly good start of the season, returned to square one with a terrible third inning.
After pitching two perfect frames to start the game, Buchholz surrendered a leadoff ground ball single just past a diving Dustin Pedroia. From there, it was same as ever for the third man in the rotation: one bad break, and everything went to pieces. A walk put two men on, his failure to field a bunt left it up to Will Middlebrooks, who could only watch as the bases were loaded, and then another walk brought home a run. An infield single, another RBI walk, and a double play later, and it was a four-run frame for the Orioles. A leadoff homer from Chris Davis in the next inning gave them a fifth.
The Sox had already managed to pick up a pair of runs in the top half of the third thanks to the efforts of Daniel Nava, Marlon Byrd, and Mike Aviles. But it wouldn't be until sixth that they really got going again. David Ortiz would provide the spark that unsettled Tommy Hunter, hitting a mammoth shot completely out of Camden Yards to right. Hits from Adrian Gonzalez and Will Middlebrooks would put the tying runs on base, where they would score on a sacrifice fly from Daniel Nava and a rare Pro-Boston balk call.
The Sox would keep right on rolling into the seventh, with Adrian Gonzalez hitting a sacrifice fly and Will Middlebrooks driving in Dustin Pedroia from second to make it 7-5. Pedroia would be the one doing the scoring in the next inning, singling to left to bring in Che-Hsuan Lin, on base with the first single of his big-league career.
The game would get tense in the eighth, as Rich HIll allowed a run to score and put the tying runs in scoring position with one out, but Vicente Padilla would be called in to work his inherited runner magic one more, stranding both and allowing Alfredo Aceves to come in and make the save in the ninth.