BOSTON — The Red Sox bullpen was shorthanded on Monday afternoon and their workload grew even heavier when Nick Pivetta couldn’t escape the fifth inning.
Matt Barnes was unavailable after throwing three straight days in the Bronx, so after back-to-back appearances of his own, Adam Ottavino was summoned for a four-out save. Though he labored a bit in the ninth, Ottavino got the job done and the Red Sox escaped with a 5-3 win.
“He’s in a great place right now, of course we’ll stay away from him tomorrow, probably the next two days, but he understands the situation,” Alex Cora said. “He knows, he’s been in this situation before. He knew Barnesy was down and we were short. He did a good job with the first batter, actually he threw the ball well again in the ninth inning. To have a guy like that that can do that, it’s huge for a baseball team.”
Handed a 5-2 lead, Ottavino allowed one run over 1 1/3 innings — on a grounder through the shift — to nail down his third save of the season.
“I felt good. I felt fine. I was definitely a little tired there at the end. Just one of those days. But felt good. No problem,” Ottavino said “We got in pretty late last night. I probably got into my bed at three-something, but nobody is going to feel sorry for us. Gotta come out and win a game. Today a lot of people contributed to that. I feel like today was a huge win. It would have been easy to give this one away but we didn’t, stayed mentally strong, and I’m proud of that.”
Sawamura gets key out
The game’s most crucial at-bat came in the sixth inning.
With the bases loaded and two outs, Marlins designated hitter Jesus Aguilar stepped to the plate against Hirokazu Sawamura. The reliever had just walked Starling Marte on four straight pitches, but with a 5-2 lead, buckled down as the go-ahead run came to the plate.
Sawamura got Marte to chase a couple of pitches outside the strike zone, then blew a nasty 94 mph splitter by him to end the threat. The unique nature of a splitter that fast caught his teammates’ attention.
“I’m pretty sure it’s the hardest split in the game, maybe the hardest one ever thrown,” Ottavino said. “I looked at it one day and it was definitely the hardest in the game. In and of itself, that’s unique, and then it still has action. You would think if you threw it that hard you might throw through the break on the pitch, but he does a good job of staying on top of it. You can see the hitters definitely think it’s a fastball out of his hand. It’s a pretty unique pitch.”
No rush on Duran
Though Jarren Duran is coming off a terrific tournament with Team USA and was recently bumped up to No. 29 on Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects list, the Red Sox have no plans to fast track him to the big leagues.
“This is a guy that’s going to impact this team in the future, and the future doesn’t mean tomorrow or a month, maybe next year or two years,” Cora said. “But we know he’s a good player. The way he impacts the game, offensively, running the bases is eye-opening. I talked to (minor league coach Darren) Fenster yesterday and the things that he did running the bases, he changed the whole complexion of that team.
“We know that he’s a good player. We know that he still has some things that he needs to get better. But we keep talking about him and we’re very happy with where he’s at right now. Now he has to go back and play and keep getting better, but obviously like Chaim said in spring training, I think it’s something that we’re going to keep paying attention to him and we’ll see what happens in the future.”
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