BOSTON - It's not often the home team ties things up in the bottom of the ninth, but then walks off the field on a sour note.
Yet that's what happened Sunday at Fenway Park.
The Red Sox, having previously trailed the Mariners, 7-0, were now trailing 8-6 in the bottom of the ninth when Jackie Bradley Jr. walked and Brock Holt singled. After a Xander Bogaerts RBI groundout made it 8-7, the Mariners intentionally walked David Ortiz, who represented the winning run, with two outs.
That's when the wait began for the switch. Torey Lovullo would pinch-run for David Ortiz, right? It even seemed like Ortiz himself was waiting for it too, as he looked toward the Sox dugout.
But it never came. Lovullo kept Ortiz in the game. When Rusney Castillo hit an infield single down the third-base side, Ortiz now stood at second base. Still, no pinch-runner despite the fact that Alejandro De Aza was ready and available to come in.
Then the inevitable happened.
With the bases loaded and two outs, Travis Shaw blooped a single to left field that scored Holt to tie the game. When left fielder Seth Smith fielded the ball, Ortiz hadn't even hit third base yet. But there he went, motoring around third headed for home.
He was out by a mile. (Watch the play here.)
After the game, Lovullo had to answer for both of those decisions. At that time, Lovullo hadn't yet spoken to third-base coach Brian Butterfield about sending Ortiz, but was quick to defend him.
"The one thing I want to say is it's a very difficult position, coaching third base," Lovullo said. "[Butterfield] does a great job. He does a spectacular job there. He was trusting his instincts. I'm sure he's going to tell me he was just trusting his instincts and he was forcing them to make a play. It was a short hop in the outfield, it was a couple short-hop throws at home plate and they executed the game plan."
The only hope Butterfield had was that the throw home would be off. When it wasn't, there was zero chance Ortiz was going to beat it.
Could De Aza have beaten it? It's also unlikely, based on how far ahead the ball was getting to home plate than Ortiz was. Sure, De Aza is faster, but he'd have to be pretty darn fast to slide in safely. That said, if Butterfield was hell-bent on sending the runner from second base regardless of where the ball was hit to, it would have at least made the send more justifiable.
But keeping Ortiz in the game was Lovullo's call for the simple fact that he feels Ortiz means too much to the lineup to remove him from it with the chance the game goes into extras innings.
"I know it's easy to say at this point we should have pinch-ran for him with David at second base.," Lovullo said. "The way I was looking at it, David was the go-ahead run and not the tying run. To eliminate him from this game, it just takes such a toll on our lineup. His presence and his force and his ability to change the game with one swing is really impressive. So to take him out of the game in that situation, knowing it would be a tie game, I just felt like it wasn't the right move. I wanted to give us a chance in case it went extra innings. And it worked out that way, I know hindsight is 20/20 and we have a lacker play at home plate maybe De Aza scores, I don't know. As it turns out, it looks like that should have been the move, but I'll live by what I did today because I just don't want to take David Ortiz out of this lineup."
After two blowout wins to begin his interim managerial stint with the Sox, Lovullo was faced with his first tough late-game decision. He'll probably be thinking about it for a bit.