Rowdy Tellez and the Milwaukee Brewers had Garrett Whitlock’s number early and often on Saturday night, and it led to a kind of loss that’s already become all too familiar this season.
Fresh off the best start of his career (and the fastest Red Sox game since the 1990s), the 26-year-old righty wasn’t at the top of his game in America’s Dairyland. Over four innings, he threw 81 pitches, 54 for strikes, and induced eight swings and misses, but allowed five earned runs on eight hits, walked one, struck out one and hit a batter.
Whitlock pitched into the fifth inning but was unable to record an out in the frame, and left a bases-loaded mess behind for Richard Bleier. The southpaw immediately had to contend with Tellez, whose torment of Red Sox pitching continues to defy logic. The former Toronto Blue Jay hit a two-run homer in the third inning Saturday, and has homered in each of the first two games of the series, bringing his career total against Boston up to 14 of 86 overall. Bleier managed to get him to hit into a double play. Despite the run scoring (charged to Whitlock), it was pretty much the best-case scenario.
