Charlie Leesman had a solid debut in Game 2 on Friday, working five innings and allowing one run—a homer—and three other hits, walking five but striking out eight.
“I’m always the toughest critic on myself. Five walks, you never want to see that. But the five walks aside, I think I was very happy with how I did,’’ he said.
Leesman likely will get another chance in September when rosters expand. He is part of the stable of young pitching the Sox believe is a plus for the organization as it looks to improve next season.
“He did well,’’ Ventura said. “Probably from the jitters of being his first time up here [is the reason for] the high pitch count [113]. He did fine.
“It’s good to see that you can call a guy up that hasn’t been up here before and perform the way Charlie did.’’
LEFTHANDED COMPLIMENTS
Leesman is a lefthander, like four of the Sox rotation pitchers.
Ventura has said he doesn’t see a disadvantage in having a predominantly one-sided rotation staff.
“It depends. You can be a little one way or the other,’’ he said. “Even looking at our lefties. Johnny [Danks], there are teams that try to put a lot of lefties in against him because he’s a different type of lefty than [Hector] Santiago, [Jose] Quintana and [Chris] Sale are. You don’t look at it as just because they’re left-handed they’re the same.
“ As a lineup or as a team you can become dominant in one or the other, and it’s always nice to have a balance.
“I don’t know if it’s a left-handed game, but you look at the [make-up] of the teams and they do have their abundance of good left-handed players,’’ he added. “But I’d rather just have good players rather than worrying about whether they’re left-handed or right-handed.’’
