Danks carried to victory in Boston behind waves of offense
/John Danks could get used to this.
A classic tough-luck loser in his prime, the Danks we know now--who has to scrap his way through every night--has now tied his highest win total (8) since 2010 after the Sox rallied on Brandon Workman and the Red Sox for a 8-3 victory, their third-straight.
Immediately following a three-run Red Sox fifth to tie the game at 3, Conor Gillaspie put the Sox up for good with another cheap home run squeezed around Pesky's Pole in right field. The two-run blast, Gillaspie's second of the year, drove in Jose Abreu and capped off a boffo night for the two. They combined for six hits, four of which went for extra bases, and three runs scored.
The Sox staked Danks to a 3-0 lead initially by tapping Boston starter Brandon Workman to death. A leadoff walk to Adam Dunn in the second was followed by two soft singles from Gillaspie and Alexei Ramirez to load the bases. Mike Napoli extended the inning with a bad throw to second on a run-scoring fielder's choice from Dayan Viciedo, before a heroic RBI GIDP came off the bat of Alejandro De Aza.
De Aza made up for it in results, if not in process. He blooped home Conor Gillaspie with two outs in the fourth, then kickstarted a three-run ninth with a booming RBI triple to center. Before the final frame, and the two RBI doubles from Gordon Beckham and Paul Konerko, turned this one into a mini-laugher, the Red Sox stormed back on an erratic Danks in the fifth.
For the first four innings, the Red Sox being unable to do anything with Danks' clearly flawed offerings was a source of comedy, another mark of evidence of their profound dysfunction and declining will to compete. Danks issued all of four of his walks on the night in the first four scoreless frames, but started the fifth by giving up five hits to six batters, with the outlier being a 400+ foot flyout to center David Ortiz. On the ropes after Xander Boegarts singled in the tying run and put runners on first and second with one out, Danks struck out David Ross and Stephen Drew back-to-back, and Boston's bats weren't heard from again.
Ronald Belisario and Eric Surkamp combined for 3.1 scoreless, and walkless innings to close it out.
Team Record: 44-47
Next Game: Monday at 6:10pm at Boston on CSN
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