Four deep balls
For Kershaw, the frustrating thing had to be that he actually pitched well. He threw three home run balls, but none of them were especially bad pitches. They just weren’t good enough against a very good group of Boston hitters.
Pearce’s home run in the top of the first came on a 91-mph four-seam fastball that had just enough of the outside portion of the plate to be dangerous. In the sixth, Kershaw threw Betts a good 2-2 slider at the low end of the strike zone that would have retired most batters. Betts, hitless in his previous 15 at bats, certainly wasn’t on a roll, yet he managed to lift the pitch into the seats in left-center.
One inning later, Martinez caught a one-one 90-mph fastball belt high on the inside third of the plate and turned on it.
Aside from that, Kershaw’s only mistake across his seven innings was a fat 0-2 first inning fastball to Andrew Benintendi that he slapped up the middle for a hit. Kershaw paid the maximum price for that mistake when Pearce hit his first home run on the next pitch.
To the other 23 batters he faced, Kershaw allowed just three singles while striking out five. His only shaky stretch came in the seventh when Bogaerts followed Martinez’ home run with a single and Rafael Devers singled with one out. But Kershaw had enough remaining to strike out Christian Vazquez and record the third out on a ground ball.
The Boston Red Sox wrapped up their historic 108-win season with a World Series title. Now let the offseason begin!