By Patrick Whalen

Well with another chance to officially clinch the A.L. East tonight the Red Sox blew it again. This time in embarrassing fashion against the Yankee by a score of 10-1. David Price got another chance to silence his doubters in Yankees stadium but they were loud and clear tonight as Price gave up 5 hits 6 runs and 4 earned over 5.1 innings. What killed Price tonight was that 3 of the 5 hits were home runs and he also walked 4 men. After this performance tonight which is one of many horrid outings in the Bronx for Price maybe it’s about time he utters the famous quote that Pedro did back in 2004, “I just tip my cap, and call the Yankees my daddy” because after that Pedro could actually pitch successfully in the Bronx. Now despite Price giving up 3 homers they were a complete product of the ballpark. Of the three home runs given up the longest was 343 ft (via Rob Bradford) which is only a home run in Yankees stadium.

Its even shown in this Fenway graphic from Red Sox Stats that all three homers would be at least 20 feet short of the wall in Fenway and end up being routine fly outs.

Yes, Price did still give them up but its hard to pitch in a place where a routine fly ends up in the third row. Price now falls to 15-7 on the season and his ERA is back up to 3.53. He’s been brilliant in the second half of the season but the Yankees are still his daddy, mostly because of the home run ball. He’s given up 8 in 14.1 innings against the Yankees while giving up 14 in 155.1 innings to all other teams.

But Price was not the only one to blame, the offense was poor again scoring only 1 run tonight off the bat of Sandy Leon who broke his 0-30 streak. Yet the rest of the offense seemed to forget how to hit and made Severino look dominate. It was the same story as last night as the Sox left 9 men on and went 1-5 with men in scoring position. The bullpen also didn’t help the cause as Joe Kelly and William Cuevas each gave up 2 runs in a combined 1.1 innings of work.

I believe Price will be fine in the postseason, he was due for a bad start after going on such a tear lately. My real concerns are the sputtering offense that is going cold at the completely wrong time of the year and more importantly the issue of who can actually get outs and get the ball to Kimbrel at the end of the game seeing how no one has stepped up over the last 2-3 weeks. Hopefully when Matt Barnes returns he could be that guy or if Joe Kelly or Ryan Braiser could find their dominate stuff again or if Workman can just regain his consistency but someone, I do not care who it is, needs to step up and be that 8th inning guy for a potential postseason run to the world series.

So don’t overreact to the first bad Price outing in a month, especially because he’ll probably be pitching at Fenway in game 2 if the Yankees are our opponent and in that case, Price would have given up maybe 1-2 runs tonight and given the Sox a chance to win. Cora knows Price doesn’t pitch well in the Bronx so he’s not gonna put him in that position where that Yankees can look like his daddy. But if the bullpen doesn’t clean itself up real soon it doesn’t matter how Price or Sale or any of the starters do because at this rate the bullpen won’t be able to hold a lead smaller than 3.

As for game 3 tomorrow the Sox are gonna look to avoid the sweep and start popping some gold bottles to celebrate clinching the division. The Sox are gonna send out the 12-4 Eduardo Rodriguez while the Yankees are going with 12-5 Masahiro Tanaka. But also just to remind Yankees fans that win has cut the Red Sox lead in the division to 9.5 games.