Clay Buchholz pitched seven effective innings and the Boston Red Sox downed the Atlanta Braves 5-2 on Thursday.
Buchholz (4-6) allowed just two unearned runs courtesy of his own error in the sixth inning. He scattered six hits and a walk and the Red Sox earned a split of this four-game home-and-home series.
Mookie Betts and Alejandro De Aza both recorded two hits and an RBI, while Brock Holt scored three runs for Boston, which snapped a seven-game road skid and won for just the second time in its last 10 games.
Shelby Miller (5-3) was saddled with another tough loss after giving up four runs -- only one earned -- on seven hits over 5 2/3 innings.
The abrupt end to Miller's outing was a complete turnaround from its start, which began with three strikeouts over three perfect innings.
Holt, though, led off the fourth with a deep drive to the center-field wall that Cameron Maybin misplayed into a triple. David Ortiz plated the first run with a groundout to the right side, and Boston added three more in the sixth.
Buchholz went down swinging to strand two runners in the fifth, but his 10- pitch at-bat appeared to take something out of Miller, who surrendered three straight singles to open the next frame.
Juan Uribe dropped a routine pop up in foul territory prior to the second hit, and the Red Sox capitalized with three unearned runs via Hanley Ramirez's double-play ground ball and consecutive RBI hits from Xander Bogaerts and De Aza.
Buchholz's errant glove flip accounted for Atlanta's runs in the home sixth. A.J. Pierzynski hit a comebacker off Buchholz's glove with two outs and the bases loaded, and when the flip went well over Ortiz's head at first, Maybin and Nick Markakis both scored.
Betts' two-out, RBI double in the seventh got one of the runs back, and Tommy Layne and Koji Uehara both pitched an inning behind Buchholz to close out the win. Uehara earned his 14th save with a 1-2-3 ninth.
[SportsNetwork.com]
