BOSTON -The Red Sox thought they were doing the right thing by giving starter Drew Pomeranz additional rest before Tuesday's start.
The lefty was originally scheduled to pitch on Sunday, the final game of the team's nine-game road trip. But that would have come against the predominantly righthanded Toronto Blue Jays, a bad matchup on paper.
Moreover, mindful that Pomeranz has already pitched more innings at the big league level this season than ever before, the Sox thought that the extra rest would be beneficial.
Instead, it may have contributed to his poor outing.
Pomeranz, pitching with seven days' rest, was rocked for five runs on two homers in the second inning and after allowing a leadoff single in the third, was pulled for his shortest outing of the season.
The lefty has had three poor starts among the 11 starts he's made for the Red Sox and two of them have come with extra rest.
In his debut with the Sox, on July 20, he was pitching with 12 days off -- unavoidable, in part because it was the result of both changing teams during the All-Star break and the All-Star break itself.
Boston Red Sox
On Tuesday, he was pitching with the benefit of seven days -- and it didn't seem to do him any good.
"I just got into some tight spots and didn't make pitches when I needed to,'' offered Pomeranz after the Red Sox lost 6-3 to Baltimore. "That's about how it went.''
But he later detailed that when he attempting to make pitches inside to Orioles hitters, "balls were just shooting back over the middle of the plate.''
And that may well have been the rest of being too strong, after a little too much time between outings.
"I don't know. . . sometimes you can be out of rhythm a little bit,'' acknowledged Pomeranz, when quizzed about the impact of the extra time between outings. "But it just came down to not making pitches when I need to.''
The home runs -- a three-run shot by J.J. Hardy and a two-run belt by Nolan Reimold -- came when he didn't execute or locate. Hardy hit a fastball that was left up in the zone, while Reimold got ahold of a hanging curveball.
But both hit multi-run homers in part because Pomeranz had issued walks - to Chris Davis two batters ahead of Hardy and to Drew Stubbs immediately before Reimold connected.
Even if the homers themselves weren't the result of being too strong, perhaps the walks and, later, getting into hitter's counts with men on base, were.