Sox spring forward with 7-4 game, series win over Athletics

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I spoke in the game thread about how Schultz was either going to need to get better at spotting his breaking balls to righties or he’ll have to figure out how to effectively use his changeup. While he did manage to break out the cambio quite a bit more, his breaking ball command remains a work in progress, as evidenced by the wildness of the breakers on his pitch chart this afternoon:

The spinners weren’t quite rolling for Schultz today, but a lot of the other stuff was. That changeup I was just talking about? It drew six swings, all against right-handed hitters, three of which resulted in whiffs. Overall, an excellent 30% of swings against Schultz came up with air over his five innings of work, heavily contributing to allowing just one run and one hit on the board. He also walked one, but more than compensated with six punchouts in total.

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That one run, though? Schultz learned the consequences of being unable to spot a breaking ball in Sacramento’s half of the second inning. After being ahead in the count, 1-2, Schultz wasn’t able to locate either his fastball or sweeper near enough to the zone to put Darnell Hernaiz away, and when forced to throw one over the plate on a 3-2 count, the young righty made him pay:

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It became somewhat clear that Schultz’s high velocity last week was at least partly a function of debut-at-home adrenaline. He still reached back to touch 97-98 mph a few times today, but after one time through the order he settled more at 94-95 mph. With his huge frame and unconventional release point, that was still enough to remain effective through all five of his innings.

At least the Sox offense actually gave him enough of a cushion to work comfortably late into the outing. Just as on Friday, Munetaka Murakami provided the death blow for the Athletics with yet another mammoth homer on a Springs breaking ball that hung like a half-dry chunk of beef jerky:

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That makes eight homers on the year for Murakami, bringing him into a three-way tie with Jordan Walker and Aaron Judge for second in the majors. With that homer, he also became the Sox leader in home runs over their first 22 games with the team, actually surpassing José Abreu’s magical start to the 2014 season.

Hey, remember when Abreu came up and hit a walk-off grand slam within a few weeks of joining the team? Even the bad times produce some good times in this game.

Anyhow, Murakami wasn’t the only of Springs’ worries. Immediately after surrendering Murakami’s blast, Colson Montgomery decided to make his day even worse by knocking one into the batter’s eye in dead center field for his fourth dinger of the young season.

After much consternation yesterday, we did see Grant Taylor toe the rubber again, though in a much less useful situation than if he had been available yesterday — which he understandably wasn’t after heavy work on Thursday. Taylor worked around a tapper of a single to put together a scoreless seventh inning before getting touched up just a bit for two runs, just his second set of runs allowed this year. Still, the stuff looked as excellent as ever, and he still has yet to allow a home run in the major leagues. He’s not quite Mason Miller — nobody is — but he does have a chance to go neck-in-neck with Caleb Bonemer as the franchise’s best second round pick since Terry Forster back in 1970.

The rest of the game was easygoing for a Sox bullpen that desperately needed an easygoing game. Taylor gave way to Jordan Leasure in the seventh inning, and Leasure managed to keep the ball in the yard to bring the game to the eighth at 7-3. Bryan Hudson got into a little bit of trouble in his own bridge inning, bringing the 7-4 game just close enough that, with an off-day tomorrow, Will Venable felt comfortable giving Seranthony Domínguez his seventh save opportunity, and ultimately, his fourth successful conversion of the year so far.

The squad gets the day off tomorrow as they move south for a three-game bout with the Arizona Diamondbacks, who have looked pretty dang good across a 14-8 start in a bitterly competitive NL West. We’ll see you for that one on Tuesday night, at 6:40 p.m. Central time!