| Orioles | 6 |
|---|---|
| Red Sox | 0 |
BALTIMORE — If there was one inning in the Red Sox’ 6-0 loss to the Orioles that captured the blueprint for the way they want their offense to wear on opposing pitchers it was the first inning.
The Sox worked 24 pitches out of Orioles starter Chris Tillman. Only half of them found the strike zone.
With two outs, they loaded the bases. Dustin Pedroia stroked single to left, David Ortiz walked on five pitches, Mike Napoli walked on six.
So when they walked away from the inning without any runs, they knew just how golden an opportunity they had squandered.
“That’s the thing,” Pedroia said. “First game of the series, we get a big hit, quiets the crowd a little bit and gets us rolling.”
At different points over the past eight games, the Sox have found themselves desperately waiting for that hit to come. It stood them up again last night.
With the bases loaded, Daniel Nava stepped to the plate with one set of numbers working for him and another working against him.
He was hitting .400 (4 of 10) this season with the bases loaded. But with two outs, he was hitting just .236, with 22 strikeouts.
Tillman added another K to the total, fanning Nava on three pitches.
The Sox, who have dropped six of nine and are 7-12 in their last 19 road games, had the whole night ahead of them, but for an offense that been on the fritz recently, it didn’t matter.
From that point on, Tillman struck out eight and only let one more runner get into scoring position. He allowed two hits and three walks in seven innings to improve to 13-3.
“We had the makings of an inning in the first, couldn’t push one across,” manager John Farrell said. “Then Tillman settled in and threw strikes.
“Good curveball, changeup when he needed to. His fastball got some swing-and-miss, particularly to our righthanders. When we did square a ball up, seemingly it was right at someone.’’
The only hits the Sox could muster off the righthander was Pedroia’s two-out single in the first and Jacoby Ellsbury’s two-out double in the fifth.
In their previous eight games, the Sox hit .225 and averaged 2.88 runs. Friday night, they were shut out for the third time in their last nine games.
After spending 60 straight days in first place, the Sox watched the Tampa Bay Rays, who manhandled the host Yankees, 10-6, knock them off their perch in the American League East and they were left to look under the hood of an offense that was not that long ago running more than smoothly.
“I think we really need to get more back to what makes us good: Grinding out at-bats,” Pedroia said. “I think a lot of guys are trying too hard right now. We’ve got to let the game come to us.
“If a starter’s got great stuff, find a way to get him out of there. We haven’t done that the last week or something. So we’ll get back to that tomorrow and start being a better team offensively.
“There’s times when two or three guys will go in funks and other guys step up. Seems like right now, everybody’s trying to be the guy that gets us out of it. That makes it tough, because then you try too hard and you’re coming out of what makes you good. You’ve got to kind of take a step back and have quality at-bats and pass it to the next guy.’’
For the second straight start, John Lackey (7-8) paid the consequences, getting no run support over his 6⅓ innings. He gave up five runs on nine hits, including three homers.
Adam Jones went deep on him twice, “by a total of three inches,” figured Lackey, who stared long and hard at the right-field wall after Jones’s second homer barely climbed over it.
The more things malfunctioned, the more Lackey had to bottle his frustration.
Jones went to the opposite field twice for his third career multi-homer game.
Asked if he ever recalled Jones going the other way on him, Lackey said, “Never.”
“The first one pretty much beat him,” said Lackey of the two-run shot in the first inning. “I don’t think he was trying to go the other way on that one.”
Lackey had dominated the Orioles over the course of his career.
He entered the game with a 3.31 ERA and a 12-4 record against them, his second-best winning percentage and ERA against any American League team.
Lackey pitched into the seventh for the eighth straight outing, but eight pitches into the inning he gave up his third home run of the night, a solo shot to Manny Machado, his ninth of the season.
After 6⅓ innings, Farrell took the ball from him. With 105 pitches, he passed the century mark for the fourth time in five starts.
After giving up 13 runs in 41⅔ innings over six starts from June 10 to July 7, Lackey has given up nine runs on 19 hits in 12⅔ innings in his past two starts.
“I felt fine, I just didn’t pitch good enough tonight,” Lackey said.
“We’ve got a lot of talented guys in here, a lot of good track records and you keep fighting. Got a long way to go. You’d think we’re due.”
Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com.