Times wires
Friday, April 1, 2011
ARLINGTON, Texas — The Red Sox are counting on Jon Lester, Carl Crawford and Daniel Bard to be among their leaders this season.
On opening day Friday, they shared much of the blame for a 9-5 loss to the Rangers.
Lester gave away a pair of early leads. Crawford, the longtime Rays star, went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts, stranding runners in scoring position each time. And Texas blew it open against Bard with a four-run eighth.
"Nobody wants to start this way," Bard said. "But I think we'll be looking back on this and laughing about it a couple of months from now."
Making his first opening-day start, Lester took the mound leading 2-0. After allowing the tying runs, his teammates put him back in front 4-2. But Boston was trailing 5-4 by the time he left with one out in the sixth.
Lester allowed three homers for the first time in his 125 outings and failed to strike anyone out for just the second time. Last year, Lester led the American League with 9.7 strikeouts per nine innings.
Lester's final home run was a three-run shot by Mike Napoli.
Bard's meltdown began with a two-run double by pinch-hitter David Murphy on a ball that kicked up chalk down the leftfield line.
"My body language brought it back in. I was praying the ball would hit the chalk, and it did," Texas manager Ron Washington said. "When it hit the chalk, I lost it."
Bard said it was bad luck.
"We were going sinker down and away," he said. "It was on the knees, outer black. He just barely got the bat to it. Three inches to the left and that's a foul ball and we're having a different conversation. That's baseball."
Boston manager Terry Francona was similarly dismissive of Crawford's bad start.
The leftfielder hit a weak liner to shortstop in his first at-bat then struck out swinging his next three. The last one took only three pitches.
"That was a tough day," Francona said. "There will be a lot better days. Hopefully it'll start (today)."
