The Red Sox fell to the Rays 5-2 Tuesday night behind a mediocre Clay Buchholz.
Buchholz did not show signs of trouble early on. His first inning went 1-2-3 on thirteen pitches, and for all the world it seemed as though Buchholz was in for a strong night on the mound.
His second did not go nearly so well. Eight of his first ten pitches in the inning went for balls, putting two men on base free of charge, and when he tried to simply get a strike over against Jeff Keppinger, the result was a shot over the Monster that left the Sox in an early 3-0 hole.
Boston would push across one run in the bottom of the inning despite a baserunning failure by Danny Valencia that likely limited the frame's potential. Again in the next frame a baserunning blunder-this time Pedro Ciriaco being caught stealing third-was enough to turn a more promising inning into just a one-run wonder, courtesy of a David Price balk.
Still, that would be enough to bring the Sox within one run, and had it stayed there, they may have been able to manufacture a run at some point. Instead, Clay Buchholz would run into hard contact in the fifth, and then after surviving that frame, offered up three hits in the sixth, the final off the base of the Monster, to score two more.
That would push the lead to three, and with just three innings left against David Price, there was precious little chance to recover. The Tampa Bay lefty would not waiver, lasting through the rest of the game, allowing scant few baserunners and no more runs to come across, leaving the Red Sox losers at the end of the day.
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