Ryan Brasier struggles continue, surrenders back-to-back homers against the Rangers
Brasier has seen his ERA balloon to 6.57
Red Sox reliever Ryan Brasier hasn’t been exactly reliable over his last four appearances. The right-handed reliever was tagged for four earned runs on three hits against the Rangers on Sunday afternoon.
Brasier saw his ERA balloon to 6.57 on the season after allowing back-to-back home runs in the sixth inning. The Rangers made hard contact off the right-handed hurler.
According to Baseball Savant, 65% of the hits Brasier has allowed are considered “hard hit.”
“My fastball has been getting hit around a bit,” Brasier told reporters in Texas following the game. “I don’t know, I’m not used to not having it. I don’t know. It’s a hard question to answer. It’s what I pitch with and what I live and die by.”
Adolis García and Kole Calhoun’s home runs combined for 827 feet. The back-to-back shots quickly gave the Rangers a 5-1 lead.
“I had a couple guys on base, made a pitch to get to two outs and then Adolis got me,” said Brasier, is now 0-2 on the season. “I thought I made a pretty good pitch to Kole and he did the same thing that the guy before him did.”
Boston ultimately lost 7-1 to Texas at Globe Life Field. The Red Sox are still sitting in last place in the American League East with a 13-21 record and are 12 games out of first place.
Braiser is not a direct reason Boston is sitting in the basement, but his last four innings of work haven’t helped their cause.
He started the season as an arm in the bullpen that manager Alex Cora could potentially rely on. Before this latest road trip, Brasier entered the Atlanta series with a 2.45 ERA. But Brasier took the loss when Orlando Arcia hit a walkoff home run during the second and final game of the series.
Cora tried to deflect some of the blame off Brasier following the loss.
“The fastball is down in the zone,” manager Alex Cora said in response to why that pitch wasn’t successful in this situation. He later pinned some of the blame on himself adding that, when Calhoun came up to the plate, “We have to do a better job managing this situation. … Maybe it’s on me not going to the mound or something, because we had the lefty ready for Calhoun.”
Cora defending his player is admirable what a manager should do. However at some point the players need to be accountable for not performing on the field.
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