BOSTON - The Red Sox are said to have one of the best lineups in all of baseball, and a quick look at the stats would back that up so far.
The fact that the Sox scored eight runs on Tuesday is no surprise. They've scored at least eight runs in four of their eight games.
But how about turning a 7-5 deficit in the seventh inning into an 8-7 lead without a single hit?
Check that - without a single hit or a single walk.
It's true.
In fact, the Sox made a little history Tuesday night, becoming the first team in the expansion era (1961) to score three-plus runs in an inning with no hits and no walks, according to Elias.
As you can imagine, it was a whacky inning. So let's go over what happened.
Matt Thornton got Hanley Ramirez to ground to the shortstop, Ian Desmond, who came into the game with five errors already. Well, make it six. Desmond couldn't field it cleanly and that put Ramirez on first base.
"We got some extra outs," John Farrell said after the game. "We talked about this yesterday. When you give a Major League team an extra out or two, it may end up leading to multiple runs inside of an inning. But I thought offensively we did a very good job from start to finish tonight. We didn't give in. Took advantage of some miscues in that seventh inning."
Let's get into said miscues further.
Next up was Shane Victorino, who had entered the game in the sixth inning and was up at bat for the first time. He got plunked by Thornton on the second pitch.
With men on first and second, Mike Napoli flied out to right field. Ramirez advanced to third base on the tag-up.
That would do it for Thornton, as the Sox pinch-hit Daniel Nava for Allen Craig, forcing a righty to the mound.
With Blake Treinen now on for the Nationals, all hell was about to break loose.
Treinen's first pitch was a 97-MPH sinker that sunk right into Craig's body. So that's an error and two HBPs in the inning to load the bases for Ryan Hanigan with one out.
And Hanigan . . . dribbles one back to Treinen.
Look out! I'm talking to you, guy in the third row behind home plate.
Treinen not only didn't field Hanigan's ball cleanly, but picked it up and threw it wildly past catcher Wilson Ramos and into the seats. That scored Ramirez on the bobble, and Victorino on the throw, which advanced the runners one base.
Two errors were charged to Treinen on the play, two well-deserved errors. Perhaps he'll be getting a gift basket in the mail from Justin Masterson, who was off the hook for the loss after that.
"Oh man, that's super frustrating," Masterson said of that play for pitchers. "I would hate it. You give up a little dribbler and guys are scoring runs. The Nationals kind of gave this game back and we took ownership of it."
With runners on second and third base and still one out, Brock Holt stepped to the plate, and he too grounded one up the middle on the first pitch. This time, Desmond handled it cleanly - but Craig was off basically on contact, forcing Desmond to go to first base and allowing the Red Sox to take back the lead for good.
"I did nothing on that play," Holt said. "That was Allen Craig. He had a heck of a read and won us the game with that. I hit it right at [Desmond], I was kind of frustrated. [Treinen] had good sink, so everyone was hitting on top of the ball right into the ground. So I saw it going right to Desmond, I was a little frustrated, but Allen Craig got such a good read, [Desmond] had no play at home and threw me out at first. I don't think he would have had him even if he tried to come home, with the read Allen got. So small things like that help win ballgames. So that was huge."
It was a series of small things on both the Red Sox end and Nationals end that led to the Sox pulling this one off. Was it conventional? No. But the good teams figure out how to win games in all ways, shapes, or forms.