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Why Caleb Durbin was laughing, feeling ‘silly’ one pitch before first Red Sox homer off position player
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- Why Caleb Durbin was laughing, feeling ‘silly’ one pitch before first Red Sox homer off position player
BALTIMORE — Caleb Durbin probably envisioned his first home run in a Red Sox uniform to be a bit different than it was Saturday.
Durbin, who has struggled at the plate in his first month with the Red Sox , finally put one in the seats as part of Boston 's 10-run ninth inning in a 17-1 rout over the Orioles at Camden Yards . It extended a 12-1 lead to 14-1 and to Durbin, it mattered little that it came off position player Weston Wilson , who was summoned to pitch in emergency duty.
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"Take 'em when you get 'em," Durbin said, laughing. "They all count the same. It is what it is."
Durbin's final plate appearance of the game went from embarrassment to elation in a matter of seconds. Facing Wilson, a utility man on Baltimore's roster, Durbin took a 44.3 mph eephus pitch to start things off. Then, he was way out in front of another floater and swung and missed for strike two. Durbin had no choice but to laugh as he regained his balance in the box.
"You can get a little tense when it's 0-2 against a position player thinking, 'Oh, crap, I don't want to strike out here,'" Durbin said. "I felt a little silly on the swing. That's why I was laughing. I was able to make up for it on the next one."
Durbin waited back on Wilson's next pitch — a 44 mph eephus just above the zone — and smoked it 386 feet for a two-run blast. It was the last of seven consecutive Red Sox hits off Keegan Akin and Wilson in a laugher of a ninth.
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"That's (expletive) baseball, man," said manager Alex Cora. "It's unreal."
Durbin's first Red Sox homer wasn't his biggest swing of the day. With Andruw Monasterio on second base and two outs in the second, Durbin broke a scoreless tie by barreling a Trevor Rogers fastball for an RBI double that started the scoring for Boston. After going down 0-2, Durbin took two pitches and then delivered his eighth RBI in a Red Sox uniform.
"Caleb with the big swing, hitting the ball to right center, that was huge," said Cora. "We did a lot of good things today offensively."
Connor Wong followed Durbin's double with a walk before Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Ceddanne Rafaela both added RBI singles on two-strike pitches to make it 3-0 in the second. The Red Sox were able to chase Rogers from the game and open up a big lead behind a dominant Garrett Crochet , who went six shutout innings.
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"If you look at what (Rogers) tried to do with men in scoring position, it was very similar to (Tarik) Skubal and to (Max) Fried. He started using the changeup," Cora said. "At one point as a group, you have to decide what you want to do and go to work. I think it was three or four changeups we got. We put good swings and we were able to score."
Durbin's three-RBI day tied a career-high. Five of his last eight hits have been doubles — a sign he's starting to find his footing after a 12-for-81 (.148) start entering Saturday. Along with Monasterio (two doubles and a grand slam) and Wong (three-run double), Durbin served as a somewhat unlikely hero on Boston's best offensive day of the year .
"Today's a great step in the right direction," he said. "Seventeen runs, that's huge for us, especially scuffling a little bit the last couple days.
"It was one of those games where you just feed off each other. That's a big part of it. They say hitting is contagious and you saw that today."
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