Rick Porcello's stellar outing against baseball's best team went one inning too long.
The Red Sox right-hander made it through seven scoreless innings with only 91 pitches vs. the Astros on Friday night, and that gave Alex Cora the confidence to leave him in for the eighth.
That turned out to be an unwise decision.
Red-hot Houston center fielder George Springer, who entered the game 9-for-18 with two home runs off Porcello in his career, drilled a two-run homer to give the Astros a 2-1 lead. The Red Sox went on to drop the first game of the series, 3-1.
Cora placed all of the blame for the loss on himself.
“That was a bad decision,” Cora told reporters. "That was a bad one from the get-go. That’s the best lineup in baseball. Every pitch is high-leverage. He did his job.
Boston Red Sox
“We have the best player in baseball right now with a runner on second and no outs. That’s on me. That’s not on Rick. I just made a bad decision, put him in a bad spot and we paid the price.”
Porcello disagreed.
"I'm out there. It's on me," Porcello said. "He's got the confidence to leave me out there, I've got to do a better job I guess rewarding that confidence. It's 100 percent on me."
The Red Sox will look to even the series on Saturday night.
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