Before the season started, I wrote about Derek Holland that I hope he pitches well this season. Well, so far he has. Unfortunately, he’s just 0-1 so far on the young season. Last night’s game was a good definition of “Hard Luck Loser”. Derek’s line on Wednesday was 8IP, 5H, 3BB, 4K, 2ER on 110 pitches. You tell me your starter goes out there and throws eight innings, allows just two runs? Yeah, I’ll take that ANY GAME from any of our starters. You cannot fault Derek Holland for this loss.
This loss goes the offense. Mostly for not putting it together. We had just five hits. Double by Murphy, and singles by Murphy, Beltre, Moreland, & Gentry. Murph had two hits, the other guys one. But the big galling factor of this loss was the EIGHT walks the Rays gave us that we couldn’t do anything with. Between the walks and the hits, we had thirteen baserunners during the game. None of them scored. I recall reading somewhere in the postgame remarks that it’s the first time that a team had walked eight times, and was shut out in like forever. That was a complete letdown of the offense. Got a couple of hits, were granted a ton of freebies by the other team, yet we still pushed nobody across home plate. Barf.
Felt bad for Holland, as he was good out there. We just didn’t back him up. That’s the total opposite of the 2012 season where he got a ton of run support. Not today. Hopefully that reverses itself next time out, and Derek keeps pitching well.
Also, Adrian Beltre had an error, his second of the year. He made eight total all of last year. Now obviously those eight had to come somewhere, but you don’t want your best defender making two in the first 10 games! Ugh.