The Boston Red Sox had a rough series over the weekend against the San Diego Padres in which they dropped two of three in blowout fashion. On today's show, Gabby discusses some notable things that went wrong for Boston in the series, including the tough starts by Nick Pivetta and Tanner Houck, and the Red Sox having meltdown innings. Also discussed is Josh Winckowski's stellar start in Sunday's win, and Bailey Horn's MLB debut on the mound.
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It's the lockdown podcast network, your team every day. Every summer I find myself spending way more money than I need to going out and eating and I finally put a stop to it. Thanks our friends at home chef who have helped me save time and money with over 30 options every week. Chef design recipes, fresh ingredients delivered directly to my door for limited time. Home Chef is offering our listeners 18 free meals plus free dessert for life and of course free shipping on your first box. Go to home chef dot com slash locked on for 18 free meals and free dessert for life must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert. Dinner house worst start of the year. The red socks having absolute meltdowns of innings. Those are just a couple of many things that went wrong this weekend for the red socks against the Padres. You are locked on red socks your daily Boston Red Sox podcast part of the locked on podcast network your team every day. Hello and welcome to locked on Red Sox your daily Boston Red Sox podcast part of the locked on podcast network your team every day. I'm your host Gabby Herlba former ESPN social media associate and currently the host of the Boston balling podcast as well and I am here to bring you the latest in all things Boston Red Sox and Monday through Friday straight to your favorite podcast feed and the best part is it's free to search locked on Red Sox on any podcast platform and you can get this show daily. Today's episode of locked on red socks is brought to you by tax network USA. Did you know that it's never too late to resolve your tax issues with the IRS? Don't wait reduce your tax debt and get help from a team of licensed tax professionals. Just call one eight hundred five four nine one zero zero zero or visit tnusa.com slash locked on welcome to the show happy Monday today is a tough one in terms of the Red Sox performance over the weekend. If you are new to this show I always say this is the show where the reactions are very based on my emotions and if you are anything like me then it means your mood is determined by whether the Red Sox winner lose so that is exactly how it is and luckily the Red Sox did redeem themselves a little bit by grabbing a win on Sunday and avoiding getting swept but what exactly went wrong in this weekend series at home versus the Padres were going to be going over all of that today as well as talking about the surprisingly best starting pitcher in the series and the fact that he deserves some credit for that and also talking about a pitcher who made his major league debut in this weekend series. The last to talk about today but to start off this Red Sox team had been playing very good baseball lately over the last few weeks and they truly had been looking like a team that has serious potential to be in playoff contention and they were sitting in that last wild card spot and they were winning games against good teams and then they go into this weekend series and some wheels just seem to have fallen off the bus and I feel like it was kind of a hangover from the Blue Jays partial series that they played earlier in the week because they did play on Monday night had a very exciting come from behind when they were down four runs in the eighth inning and they ended up rallying back and winning that game then they took a pretty bad loss on Tuesday night against the Blue Jays nine to four then Wednesday's game got suspended due to rain and it's going to be made up at the end of August so then they didn't play it Thursday so then going into this weekend series my hopes were that they would be able to show up against another good team this Padres team has been playing good baseball as well they are over 500 and I wanted to see the Red Sox go in there and take care of business and that is not what they did over the weekend and it felt like they just were so many steps behind the Padres and it wasn't even like it was a problem for the whole game in these games because the beginning of the series the first game on Friday night the Red Sox lost that game nine to two and the thing is Nick Pavetta was pitching and he for the most part was cranking through the first few innings he looked awesome and then the fifth inning hit and everything just completely fell apart for him the Padres scored nine runs just in that one inning and that was all the scoring that they did for the entirety of the game to get that nine to two wins so it's not like they were doing much damage to the rest of the game they just scored a bunch of runs in that one inning and it was very odd and very much not the level of play that we need to see from the Red Sox team and Nick Pavetta has definitely been overall pretty good this year I mean he's by no means a high end starter in this rotation he's more of a consistent number three type of guy but generally he's been pretty good and he does have the problem with giving up the long ball but he for the most part has produced quality starts and he's been able to get the job done when needed but for whatever reason the wheels just completely fell off the bus on Friday night the Red Sox had just an absolute mess of an inning and when you go down by that much and a team scores nine runs against you in one inning that's tough to come back from so I knew the game was kind of awash when that all took place when they scored those runs Rafael Devers did hit a home run in that game which he has been doing quite a bit of lately he's on this home run tear right now he did hit another one on Sunday when the Red Sox won the game but the funny thing is it's one of these things where the Red Sox knew this game was awash after that nine run inning and Nick Pavetta only lasted four innings because he gave up seven hits and five earned runs and then Greg Weiser came in for an inning and gave up the other four earned runs and then it's almost foolproof at this point that Chase Anderson comes into games for the Red Sox when they know that it's over and they're losing that game and the benefit to having him out there is that he can eat innings I mean he is not a great reliever and that's why the Red Sox and Alice Cora have been putting him into games late when the Red Sox know they're not going to win that game because why would he waste their better arms in games like that so as soon as I saw that Chase Anderson was coming into the game I was like okay clearly the Red Sox know this game is over so that was rough that game was just very much not ideal Anderson looked pretty good though he went for innings gave up just one hit and no runs he did record two strikeouts as well I have some high hopes for him I'm hoping he continues to improve his game the more reps that he gets but overall Friday night was just not a pretty site for the Boston Red Sox and then on Saturday I mean Saturday they lost 11 to 1 and I thought Friday night's loss was embarrassing talk about even more embarrassing and again they scored a bunch of runs in one inning and that seems to have been a trend for this Red Sox team as of late because even Monday night when they beat Toronto 76 the Blue Jays still had a four run inning in the seventh inning in that game and then when they beat the Red Sox 9 to 4 the next night they had a big five run inning in the third so there's definitely a trend about the Red Sox having one inning in which they give up a ton of runs in the 11 to 1 loss on Saturday that was the fifth inning the Padres had a five run inning and it's just amazing to me that this hasn't been a huge problem but for whatever reason this week the Red Sox have had one inning that things just completely fall apart for them and then they can't come back from that so that's one big standout issue that took place over the weekend against the Padres and another thing too was Saturday night Tanner Hauck started and that was honestly the worst I've seen him all season long he only went 4.1 innings he gave up nine hits and seven earned runs he had forced strikeouts but he gave up three home runs in the game and his ERA is now up to a 267 which obviously is still very good he's been so dominant this season and he was due for a stinker at some point every pitcher has them but he just was missing his spots in the middle of the strike zone and it was tough to watch because that just goes to show that it was not his day and as frustrating as it was and just how bad of a performance it was you can almost look back on it and say it being that bad just shows that it was an outlier and that we shouldn't be worried about this moving forward from him I still expect him to remain the Red Sox ace he is the guy who consistently gets the job done on the mound the most in this starting rotation and I don't see that changing at all this was just an outlier a really bad performance for Tanner and I think it just was frustrating because of the fact that it followed a bad performance by the Red Sox the night before so it was just unfortunate timing there that it was back to back games of the Red Sox giving up tons of runs and them not being able to score themselves so it was definitely a frustrating night for Tanner but there were just several things that went wrong for this Red Sox team I mean they could not put it together they had opportunities with runners on base and they would ground into a lot of double plays in those scenarios and they couldn't capitalize when they had the opportunity to score people so that was the biggest issue in the first two games of that series and then they just fell apart the pitching staff fell apart and it was just a complete mess of a couple games of Red Sox baseball and I look back on those two games and I say those were just outliers I mean they are not going to play that poorly consistently that's a very hard thing to do believe it or not I mean unless you're a team like the White Sox this year maybe who just are abysmally bad then maybe you expect these kinds of losses regularly but with how well this Red Sox team lately has been playing in general they're starting to mesh and they're starting to figure things out so I would be hard pressed to jump to conclusions that this is how it's going to be was it very frustrating a hundred percent were there many different things that went wrong yes for whatever reason the Red Sox need to figure out how to not crash and burn in one inning of each game because all of that damage that they let up in these last few games over the course of the week was too much damage that they couldn't come back from so that is something that needs to change and that they need to figure out I expect him or how to bounce back in his next start. Pavetta not as confident but again he doesn't need to be a top of the rotation guy especially when they have Hauck and Carter Crawford at the top of the rotation who both have generally been pitching well so if you have Nick Pavetta as that solid number three then that's fine for a rotation that early on in the season could have just easily crashed and burned all together and been an absolute nightmare but it has not been that so I still believe that the Red Sox will bounce back and they showed that when they bounced back on Sunday on the backs of a pitcher who surprisingly had the best performance of all of the starters in the series so I'm going to be talking about that next. If you're looking for a fun way to play daily fantasy sports you should check out prize picks today. Prize picks is America's number one daily fantasy sports app with over five million active members. 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The Red Sox may have had a nightmare first couple games against the Padres but they did come back in the finale of the series and walk away with a 4-1 win and going into the series and examining the pitching match-ups, the one who could have been the biggest question mark was actually the Red Sox starter who looked the best in the series and that was Josh Winkowski. Now early on in the season when Kowski was pitching really well for this Red Sox team and even last year and the year before he's been bounced around a lot between the rotation, the bullpen, spending some time in AAA coming back up so the Red Sox haven't really kept him in a consistent role and last year when they were starting to give him a little bit more consistency he was pitching very well. So earlier on in this season the Red Sox optioned him to AAA and it was a bit of a surprise because he had been pitching well but then he just got called back up recently, pissed out of the bullpen early on in the week against the Blue Jays and looked very good so it was certainly promising so I had high hopes for his start on Sunday but wasn't sure if it was going to be a situation where he hasn't started on the majorly roster in a while so he ends up not having a good start as a result of that but he ended up having the best start out of the three because Pavetta and Haupt both struggled. He earned the win, went five complete innings on Sunday giving up four hits and zero earned runs. He did record a strikeout in there too. He was completely locked in and the Padres offense could not figure him out. He now has a two eight ERA on the season and I feel like he is one of the Red Sox best pitchers. He has a great pitching arsenal. He's mixing up a lot of different pitches. What I would like to see from him moving forward more is longevity. I would like to see him pitch more innings go deeper into games if they are going to keep him as an option in the rotation and it's definitely interesting because you have Cooper Criswell who's been chilling in AAA because once you get option down there you have to stay down there for a minimum of 15 days unless somebody gets injured then you can get called back up early but he had been pitching very well out of the Red Sox rotation in place of Garrett Whitlock who is now missing the entirety of the season which is unfortunate but Criswell was a great option to replace him in the rotation. He certainly was pulling his weight and then he got sent back down to AAA and the Red Sox were doing bullpen games on the days where he was supposed to be starting and now when Kowski started Sunday Brian Bayo did have his next start moved. He's scheduled to start on Wednesday of this week because he has been struggling lately and I think the Red Sox are hoping that him having a little bit more time in between starts this time he could hopefully work out some of his issues that he's having mechanically so we'll see how that goes but when Kowski making the start on Sunday makes me feel like the Red Sox might be seriously considering him again for the rotation because during spring training this year and before the season started they hadn't really defined their fourth or fifth starters yet there was no specificity about Tanner how or Garrett Whitlock being in the rotation. The Red Sox hadn't come out and actually said that that was going to be a thing and we only knew for sure that Bayo Crawford and Pavetta were going to be in the rotation and then it kind of left the other couple spots up for grabs and there was a conversation for the longest time about Josh when Kowski potentially having that fifth spot in the rotation and then the Red Sox decided they would prefer to use him out of the bullpen so that's kind of where he stayed and where he had been pitching but to me the fact that they had him start the game could mean that maybe they're trying to feel things out and see how he could be as a starter and I find that to be a little unfair to Cooper Crispo just because he has been in the rotation and he's earned his spot there but if when Kowski comes out and just continues to shove like he did on Sunday then it'd be hard to justify not putting him into the rotation or this could all be too deep into it and it could literally just be that they just needed that fifth starter for Sunday and now they're going to call Criswell back up soon and then when Kowski's going to go back in the bullpen that very much is a possibility it could go either way but regardless of what they do decide with when Kowski I've been so impressed by his growth he came a long way last year and it's really showing and being put on full display now how he has just been locked in and been consistent and I'm excited to see his ability to moving forward contribute in whatever capacity the Red Sox do decide to put him in whether that's pitching out at the rotation pitching out of the bullpen either way he is definitely going to be beneficial for this Red Sox team to have and Alex Cora even said that he was surprised when when Kowski was sent back down to AAA because he feels like he's one of the best pitchers that this team has and I agree with that for sure there aren't many other pitchers on this staff who have been as consistent as he has and I feel like his start on Sunday was something the Red Sox really needed after what had been an absolute nightmare of a series for them prior to that so then to go into Sunday and for him to not give up any earned runs and keep the Red Sox in the game to allow them the chance to win it was absolutely huge for somebody who hadn't started for this Red Sox team in a while that's got to be a huge confidence boost for him and it's really good for the Red Sox to know okay we can throw him into the fire in a game like this when we really need the win and he can lock down and get it done and the thing about the Red Sox that I've noticed is there are a lot of talented arms on this team they just need to be utilized in the right way and Andrew Bailey definitely deserves a ton of credit for this in the way that he's been working with these pitchers and the approach that they're taking but you look at a guy like Josh Minkowski he deserves his opportunity to be out there and I would like to see the Red Sox give these guys a chance because the talent is certainly there it's just a matter of figuring out what makes the most sense in terms of this player's role where should we be putting them should they pitch in long relief should they be a one inning type of guy or can they be a starter are they capable of having the innings to do that and the stamina to do that so when Kowski is an interesting one I think the Red Sox could put him in multiple different roles and he would be able to excel in those roles but if they do want to keep him in the rotation I definitely would like to see more length from him getting through five innings of no run baseball is fantastic nothing to be ashamed of there I just would love to see them stretch him out a little bit and maybe see if he could get to the sixth inning and maybe try to finish that inning and so they're going to have to play that by ear but if they do want to keep him in the rotation it's going to be something that's going to be important moving forward but he deserves his flowers because he had a great star on Sunday and the Red Sox needed that balance back because it's easy to get discouraged after what happened on Friday and Saturday and that's why I'm trying to look at the overall picture and say okay yeah Friday and Saturday were a mess but it was really overall just one inning in both of those games that was a mess and then you look at the rest of the game and it was competitive the rest of the game obviously you can't take out that inning but say you did these two teams were pretty much neck and neck other than that and that's something that you should feel optimistic about is the fact that these Red Sox are grinding and they hate losing and I can see it in their faces when they're in that dugout they want to win and they are hungry and they are competing with really good baseball teams and I think with the Padres you know it's always interesting during an early play I mean these two teams rarely ever face each other during the regular season now with the new schedule that was implemented last year they will be playing each other once a year but it's just hard when you're not seeing a team a lot and then you go and you see them in a series for the first time in only time all season so you never really know what you're going to get from those types of matchups but I feel like this is something that the Red Sox could have walked away from the series with a win it was a winnable series for sure and then when things just got out of hand that this is what it is that's just part of baseball but looking at it at face value I saw it as a pretty competitive overall dynamic between these two teams so then going into sunday the Red Sox cleaned up the mess from the last couple nights before that played really good baseball all game long and Winkowski absolutely deserves a ton of credit for that Devers also hit another home run in the game that traveled 363 feet it was a two-run homer so it gave the Red Sox a 2-0 lead early and then Jaren Duran also crushed a home run later in the game he crushed one on saturday also he has been on an absolute tear lately and if you've been listening to my show you know that my push for him being in the all-star game is something that is continuous until he hopefully gets into the all-star game so definitely some positives to take away from the experience especially the fact that Winkowski hopefully has gained a lot of confidence now so that he can carry that into his starts moving forward coming up I'm going to be talking about another pitcher for the Red Sox who made his majorly debut in the series against the Padres so you won't want to miss that you definitely won't want to miss checking out fandrel if you're trying to win a bunch of money I love sports I love them so much that I never want them to stop but as the playoffs wind down we get fewer games and the sports aren't sports saying like I want them to but fandrel lets me keep the sports going 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be caught up with everything going on in sports so check that out today as well you know we love talking stats here at locked on Rockies here's one that's super simple to remember discover automatically doubles the cash back you've earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with cash back match that means with discover you could turn 150 dollars cash back to 300 dollars that's right you could put it towards some memorabilia you've had your eye on or treat yourself to a premium sports network you earn and discover doubles see terms at discover.com/creditcard the red socks in talking about their very disastrous first couple games of their series against the Padres and then a very clean game opposite of disastrous on Sunday to close out the series they did have a pitcher in the midst who made his major league debut and that was Bailey Horn so this is a left-handed pitcher that the red socks acquired from the Chicago White Sox on April 30th in exchange for cash considerations and they optioned him to triple A Worcester right away he has had a variety of experience pitching in the minors but hadn't pitched at the major league level yet so he was pitching well for the red socks in Worcester so they were impressed by it and they decided that they wanted to see his stuff up at the major league level so he was recalled from triple A on a Friday because the day before that they had optioned right-handed reliever Isaiah Campbell and catcher Tyler Heinemann to triple A Worcester and they also activated Connor Wong off the paternity list so basically Connor Wong came back and then they optioned those two players so they needed to bring another pitcher on to the major league active roster because of Campbell going down to triple A so they made the decision to call up Horn and give him his opportunity to pitch at the major league level and he pitched for the red socks in their disastrous 11 to 1 loss on Sunday against the Padres but honestly if you want to give somebody a chance to have their major league debut a lot of times it could be better to put them in a game like that than in a high leverage situation when the red socks are maybe up by one run and there's traffic on the bases and somebody needs to come in and clean up the mess you don't want to put a guy in that situation who's making his major league debut so I don't really mind Alex Quora for letting that be the game that he made his debut the red socks we're not going to come back and win that game so mine is about to let him showcase what he can do in a game that's already out of reach so he came in relief of Tanner Hauck on Saturday when it was just a disastrous start for Tanner so Horn came in and pitched two and two thirds innings giving up four hits and two earned runs he also struck out two he did give up one home run but overall he generally looked okay I would have loved to see a little bit more from him I think we just need to see him pitch more to know what he's going to actually be but generally he definitely had his struggles but didn't look too disastrous I would give it about a mediocre performance in his major league debut for this red socks team he definitely has some good stuff though I mean his fastball velocity is very good he can go up to 97 there which will serve him very well he can throw strikes with it which was good he definitely had pretty good command when he was out there on Saturday which I really liked to see so he also has a cutter that he throws the red socks have definitely been encouraging him to throw that more often because when he was throwing that in Worcester he allowed only three earned runs in 16 innings that's a 1.69 ERA and opponents batted just 167 against him he struck out 19 batters and walked nine so he was having a ton of success at the AAA level and that was because he was mixing his cutter in and not just relying too heavily on his fastball and the red sex obviously saw the numbers and said let's give him a chance up in the majors he also has a sweeper available and a slider that kind of provides a different look and can throw off opposing hitters so the biggest thing that stands out about him is that he does have a variety of pitches if you have four pitches in your back pocket that you can throw that'll help you to be a lot more successful and that's something that comes with growth of a pitcher is developing more pitches to use in your arsenal to be able to last longer in games that you throw in and I think a lot of him coming in to Saturday's game could have been nerves and again he did not pitch badly at all I mean giving up just two runs over 2.2 innings is pretty good and you know obviously we should be expecting that he might take a little bit of time to adapt to pitching in an environment like Fenway Park and having that pressure or pitching at the major league level but the good thing is he definitely has that foundation he has the potential to pitch very well because he has a lot of different pitches that he utilizes which is so important to successful pitchers I mean look at Tanner how even last year he only really relied heavily on two pitches his fastball and his slider and his slider still is his best pitch but he's added a couple other pitches to the mix now and that's what's allowed him overall to be as dominant as he has been this year he's been able to pitch a lot deeper into games and he utilizes more pitches every time he is out on the mound and he's attacking that strike zone and I really like this version of him and I think corn definitely deserves a chance for sure I liked what I saw when he was out there in terms of the stuff that he can bring to the table and I like the fact that his fastball velocity is up because those are all key aspects to being a successful pitcher so he definitely can be I just think he needs more time to be out there and who knows if the Red Sox are going to keep him up or not he might get sent back down to AAA this could be just a temporary thing but it is good that the Red Sox were able to get a taste of what he's like as a pitcher and know what to expect in terms of the types of pitches he's going to be throwing moving forward so I definitely enjoyed watching him pitch overall it's always nice getting new guys in there who we've seen or heard of maybe when they're in the system at one of the other lower levels and they're succeeding at those levels it's nice to see them get their chance up in the major so that's exactly what happened with him the Red Sox liked his numbers down in AAA so they said let's give him a chance let's call him up so they did and hopefully he can keep this up because it would be fantastic to be able to watch him pitch and have him be a secret weapon for the Red Sox out of this pen moving forward but either way let's hope they bounce back this week from those two really bad performances I'm hoping that Sunday's performance kind of eases them back into having another strong week because they are right there in that wild card picture they just need to keep playing a baseball another they're finally starting to click and figure things out they definitely have a really good shot when it comes to making the playoffs just got to keep everybody locked in and focused and like I've said on this show in the past Alex Gora certainly deserves his props for managing this team the way that he has through all the injuries this year and the lack of what some might say pure talent on the roster he's done a great job of keeping this team afloat and now they're playing above 500 baseball and for the longest time this year they were sticking right at that 500 mark and whenever they would pass it by a game or two they would lose and get themselves back at 500 so now they're starting to finally play consistently over 500 ball and hopefully we can put this series against the Padres behind us and start from scratch this week and just have a good week of baseball but like I always say you can do your job in that by keeping the faith go red Sox and I will catch you on the flip side. 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