On a day Dave Dombrowski’s team suffered a significant loss off the field, his ballclub didn’t miss a beat on it.
Hours after learning that All-Star catcher J.T. Realmuto would require knee surgery, the Phillies still managed to beat the Red Sox with relative ease in a 4-1 decision to open a three-game series that marks Dombrowski’s return to Boston.
Why? Well, because the former Red Sox president of baseball operations turned Phillies top baseball boss has been able to do something that the Red Sox and current chief baseball officer Craig Breslow haven’t…
They’ve built a well-oiled machine that is capable of withstanding the ups and downs that come with a 162-game season.
"We're comfortable with (the situation),” Dombrowski told reporters before the game. ”(Backup catcher Garrett) Stubbs has actually been playing pretty well for us recently.”
With ace Zack Wheeler, who called Realmuto “the best in the game” and said he had been his battery mate in “just about every start” he’s made in Philadelphia, on the mound, Stubbs was able to step right in without rocking the boat.
Wheeler and Stubbs teamed up for seven innings of three-hit, one-run ball at the Red Sox’s expense. Boston managed just one more hit on a night where their flaws were once front and center — especially on defense.
A horribly-timed dropped ball by journeyman first baseman Dominic Smith that should have ended the first inning turned into a two-run error, the second of Boston’s two errors on the night to increase their total to a major league-leading 50.
“Unfortunate, tough play up the line,” Smith said of his costly blunder. “Not trying to get my arm knocked off, not trying to go on the injured list.”
We'll take it! pic.twitter.com/xr5TNpW4yw
— NBC Sports Philadelphia (@NBCSPhilly) June 12, 2024
At this point, Alex Cora knows there’s really not much that can be done about it…
“I’m not upset at the guys, I’m not upset at the effort. It’s just the reality of who we are,” Cora said. “When we don’t make plays, we put ourselves in a bad spot.”
As if having your former baseball ops leader waltz in and beat you wasn’t bad enough, they were also burned by another old friend and fan favorite: slugger Kyle Schwarber, who wasted little time in reminding the Sox of what they were missing.
Schwarber took Boston starter Kutter Crawford deep on the very first pitch of the game, golfing a 91mph four-seamer an estimated 444 feet over the Sox’s bullpen in right-center — all before Dave O’Brien could even finish reading a pre-game Audi advertisement read on NESN (that’ll be $30, please…).
Kyle Schwarber homers on the first pitch in his first AB in Boston since he played for them in the 2021 ALCS!
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) June 11, 2024
pic.twitter.com/X6cGwvk7e9
The man once known as “Kyle from Waltham” did it to Crawford again in the fifth inning, this time hitting a ball 427 feet over the Phillies bullpen in right to make it 4-1.
The good news, though, is that Crawford showed some signs of breaking out of his month-long funk in Monday’s start. While he gave up four runs total, only two were earned (again, thanks for that Dom…) and he gave up only six hits and one walk while striking out eight and logging six full innings.
“Schwarber got me a couple times there, but mechanically — pitch shapes, the way I was attacking the zone — it felt a lot better tonight,” Crawford said.
Of the two long balls he served up to Schwarber, Crawford said, “It was a learning moment for me, but yeah — he put two good swings on those balls.”
Boston’s lone run came on a Rob Refsnyder sacrifice fly to plate Jarren Duran in the first inning that tied the game at 1-1.
Another offensive standout was David Hamilton, who stayed hot at the plate and collected half of Boston’s hits in a 2 for 4 day — and his one out single in the ninth broke up a stretch of 14 consecutive Sox batters retired.
“Hammy’s swinging the bat well,” Cora said of Hamilton, who raised his batting average to .289 — the highest it’s been since his third game of the season on April 10th.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for many of his teammates as Boston failed to score more than two runs for the third time in four games. It would be a truly bad time for the bats to go silent again as Boston faces the two best teams in baseball this week, with the rival Yankees coming to town for three over the weekend, but it wouldn’t be surprising in the least…
Furthermore, this game was a juxtaposition of one team that’s been built to win now and has assembled the necessary pieces around the edges to withstand injuries with another that has brought in washed up parts like the Dom Smiths and (recently DFA’d) Garrett Coopers of the world.
You can’t control your injuries, and the Red Sox have certainly had more than their fair share this season, but you can plan for them to some extent by populating your roster and farm system with players capable of stepping in to carry the baton for a stretch. And as we well know by now, these Red Sox haven’t done that.
There are still two more games left in the series to flip the narrative, true, but Tuesday’s certainly wasn’t an encouraging opening act…
Gethin Coolbaugh is a columnist for Boston Sports Journal. Follow him @GethinCoolbaugh on X/Twitter.