Jays silence Sox, 3-0
MLB. There were no last- gasp rallies for the never-say-die Sox at the tail end of Thursday night’s game.
The Toronto Blue Jays scratched for three runs against venerable knuckler Tim Wakefield, and the Sox bats once again sagged against right-hander A.J. Burnett in a 3-0 loss at Fenway Park.
The lifeless Boston lumber has now been shut out twice over the last five games, and plated a grand total of four runs over that very same offensively-challenged stretch.
The perpetually disappointing Burnett entered the game with a 2-2 mark and 6.07 ERA, but marched into Boston armed with his best stuff. Burnett finished with 7 2/3 innings of shutout ball and scattered only three hits on the evening while totaling both five walks and five whiffs.
Wakefield gutted it out for seven innings while he tried taming his savage knuckler, but finished up a little less perfect than his Toronto counterpart. The 41-year-old allowed three earned runs on six hits and walked four batters while also failing to register a single strikeout.
The Jays got on the board in the top of the third when Alex Rios lined a single to start the frame, took advantage of the deliberate knuckler to steal second base and then scored on a Scott Rolen RBI single. A Vernon Wells sacrifice fly in the fifth inning scored Rolen and made it a 2-0 lead for the Jays, and a Rios solo jack into the left-field seats in the seventh finished out the Toronto scoring.
The Sox had a couple of opportunities to get something started — such as a leadoff double by Mike Lowell in the second inning and a two on with nobody out situation in the fourth frame — but simply couldn’t come through in the clutch.
One overwhelmingly positive development from the contest, though, was the continued offensive resurgence of David Ortiz despite some residual right knee soreness. Ortiz smashed a pair of singles to right field up and over the defensive shift typically employed against the lefty slugger, and continued pushing the batting average up toward the respectable .200 neighborhood.