The Red Sox survived the Felix Doubront meltdown and did good work against Jeremy Hellickson and the Tampa Bay bullpen to take their second straight win over the Rays Tuesday night, 7-5.
After a couple of scoreless innings from each starter, Felix Doubront's regularly scheduled middle-innings came a bit early. Offering up three straight one-out walks to load the bases in the third, Doubront would give up a single to Ben Zobrist to plate a pair, and then a sacrifice fly to Evan Longoria to make it three runs in. Jeff Keppinger would end the threat there with a ground ball out, but three runs allowed against this lineup was an unimpressive feat.
Luckily for Doubront, the Red Sox were up to the task of recovering and then some over the next four innings. It started with a pair of leadoff hits in the fourth; a double from Cody Ross setting up James Loney for an RBI single to make it just a two-run deficit. Then, in the fifth, the Sox got to Hellickson for three quick baserunners on a walk and two ground balls, and just like that he was gone. Now trailing just 3-2, the Sox would get a sacrifice fly from Pedroia to even things up before the inning ended.
They did not stop there, however. Back-to-back singles off of Kyle Farnsworth gave the Sox a pair of chances with one out in the sixth, and while neither Jose Iglesias nor Pedro Ciriaco were fully up to capitalizing, Sean Rodriguez threw away the latter's ground ball, allowing the go-ahead fourth run to come home.
One inning later came the death blow. Rallying with two outs off a suddenly struggling Wade Davis, the Sox got a pair of walks, a single from Jarrod Saltalamacchia to score one, and then a double to the gap in deep right field to make it 7-3 in favor of Boston.
The Rays would make it interesting, loading the bases against Clayton Mortensen before getting a two-run single off of Junichi Tazawa in the bottom half of the inning, but that was as close as they would get. Andrew Bailey closed out the ninth, and the Red Sox left victors.
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