BOSTON — The Boston Red Sox gave the Chicago White Sox all kinds of trouble during a three-game series last month at Rate Field.
Tuesday’s series opener between the teams at Fenway Park didn’t go much better for the White Sox, who suffered a 14-2 loss in front of a sellout crowd of 37,669.
“Pretty good spanking we took there,” Sox manager Will Venable said.
The 14 runs matched a season-high for a White Sox opponent. The Sox lost 14-2 on opening day to the Milwaukee Brewers.
Despite the blowout loss, the White Sox (59-53) remained three games ahead of the Cleveland Guardians (57-57) in the American League Central. The Guardians lost 6-2 to the New York Mets on Tuesday.
The White Sox were outscored 15-2 while being swept in the July 7-9 series against the Red Sox at Rate Field. The location changed, but they couldn’t slow Boston down again Tuesday.
The Red Sox scored six runs in the first inning, which featured a grand slam by Caleb Durbin. Jarren Duran followed the slam with a home run.
White Sox starter Davis Martin surrendered three home runs in the game. He went five-plus innings, allowing nine runs on 10 hits with one strikeout and two walks.
“Obviously the first inning there with Davis, just couldn’t find it there,” Venable said. “Made an adjustment, which obviously worked for him, settled in nicely. And then just the one homer after that, got us into the sixth inning.
“Made an adjustment, but got to find a way to be on top of that earlier.”
Martin allowed at least four runs in the first inning for his second straight start, giving up four in the first Saturday against the New York Yankees.
“The (start against the Yankees), it was more a mechanical thing,” Venable said. “This time, it was more the tipping variety where I think he was giving some stuff away. Cleaned it up, and then we saw him pitch effectively after that.”
Martin added on the subject of tipping, “We looked at some of the comfortable swings they were taking, some of the adjustments we made thereafter. I felt like we kind of started getting a lot more weak contact, a lot more swing-and-miss. I definitely think there’s something to it, so something we’ve got to go look at in between starts and see if we can clean it up and go from there.”
The first inning for the Red Sox began with a Nick Sogard leadoff double. Martin hit Ceddanne Rafaela with a pitch. With one out, Willson Contreras drove in a run with a single.
Masataka Yoshida then singled to load the bases for Durbin, who hit the grand slam on a 1-0 sinker to give the Red Sox a 5-0 lead. Four pitches later, Duran homered.
Wilyer Abreu homered with one out in the fifth, giving the Red Sox a 7-1 lead.
Martin exited after the first two batters reached in the sixth. The Red Sox scored six runs in that inning, with Erick Fedde coming in for Martin for his first outing since being shifted to the bullpen.
Abreu hit his second home run of the game in the eighth. Overall, Fedde allowed four earned runs on five hits in three innings.
“First time we’ve asked him to do that, come in mid-inning, it’s a tough assignment there,” Venable said. “A little different preparation, but that’s the type of role that he’s going to be in here where he’s going to have to come out of the ’pen and figure out and make an adjustment.
“I thought after that first (relief) inning, he did a really nice job of really settling down and throwing the pitches where he wanted to.”
Offensively the White Sox went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position. Red Sox starter Patrick Sandoval allowed two runs on six hits with five strikeouts and four walks in five innings.
“A lot of foul balls, fastballs in the zone, something that we’ve talked about for us to be the best version of ourselves,” Venable said. “We’re going to have to turn some of those balls around and hit them forward. If you miss those pitches in this league, it can be really tough on you.”
