Red Sox 8, Orioles 12: A bullpen implosion

With the Red Sox and Orioles starting a five-games-in-four-days stretch at Fenway, Boston came out of the gates hot for the series opener on Friday. They scored four in the first and added on two more in the second to jump out to an early day. They also got a really solid start from Garrett Whitlock, who allowed just two runs over six innings. Unfortunately, we got a reminder that this bullpen is liable to implode on any given night. With an 8-2 lead in the seventh, Jake Diekman, John Schreiber, and Matt Strahm combined to give Baltimore the lead by the ninth, and that was that. This was a game that was in hand against a bad team, and frankly the kind of loss that can’t happen for a team with playoff ambitions.

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