Boston Red Sox edge past Oakland Athletics 9-6 – MLB News
Boston Red Sox edged past the Oakland Athletics 9-6 at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts on Monday, April 23 in the opening game of their three match series of the 2013 Major League Baseball regular season.
Red Sox will be extremely happy with the outcome of the clash. Despite making a slow start to the contest, the Red Sox held their nerves to outclass their rivals in finer details of the game. It will be interesting to see if Boston can continue the food
work in Game 2 to secure an impassable 2-0 series lead.
Red Sox posted forgettable results last season as they finished at the bottom of the American League East Division but with more depth and variety in their batting and pitching lineup they have a good chance of turning things around. Athletics, on the other
hand, will be looking to learn from their mistakes to keep the series alive.
Red Sox’s starting pitcher Felix Doubront produced a magical performance as he allowed just three hits and three runs in just over six innings to grab his second straight win of the season. Striking out batters at regular intervals, he created all sorts
of problems for the A’s batting line up. Closer Andrew Bailey pitched the perfect ninth to save fourth game of the season.
"I've been feeling good on the road, too, but I just love hitting here," he said. "You've got the wall right there and you can get away with some stuff that you don't necessarily have to hit it so good. Sometimes you can hit a pop fly that would be an out
at some other parks and it goes off the wall."
"The last 10 days his swing has been so compact," Boston manager John Farrell said. "We're 19 games into the season and he's got 25 RBIs, that's what we were hoping he'd be able to do."
Mike Napoli and Will Middlebrooks made valuable contributions to help the Red Sox post a decent total on the board. Middlebrooks homered to left in the fourth inning while Napoli smacked a grand slam home run in the fifth inning.
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