“Every (expletive) pitch counts,” Alex Cora told reporters on Sunday.
He’d gotten himself ejected arguing balls and strikes in the series finale in the Bronx, though his frustration with home-plate umpire Junior Valentine’s egregious calls was more than justified.
Less so in Houston Tuesday night, when the Red Sox manager again argued himself out of the team’s game before its eventual completion, a 7-3 loss in which his team made as many errors as they plated runs.
Cora wasn’t the only one. Home-plate umpire Pat Hoberg ejected Alex Verdugo as the right fielder milled about the Red Sox dugout in the fourth.
Making his first start since getting hit in the face with a line drive on June 16, Tanner Houck looked rusty early on. After striking out leadoff man Jose Altuve, the first inning went downhill quickly. The right-hander allowed a single to Alex Bregman and a two-run homer to Kyle Tucker before getting the second out.
Rafael Devers then prolonged the first inning by making his 16th error of the season, two more than his 2022 total. The Red Sox lead MLB with 90 errors, and have made 10 more errors than any other American League team. They made one for each run scored on Tuesday night.
Houck issued back-to-back walks to load the bases before escaping the jam, but needed 31 pitches to get through the first. He improved as the outing progressed, finishing the night with a 1-2-3 fifth inning.
This second game in Houston was dramatic and chaotic from the start. In the second inning, Astros starter Justin Verlander appeared to run down the pitch clock. After Hoberg called an automatic ball, the reigning American League Cy Young explained that his pitch-com, the device used to relay pitches between pitcher and catcher, wasn’t working. After an Astros bat boy delivered a new pitch-com, Hoberg removed the automatic ball from the count.
As Cora made his way out of the dugout to talk to the umpire, Verlander shouted, “(Expletive) off!”
Throughout, the lineup’s recurring issue of failing to plate runs carried over from the night before. After going 3-for-18 with runners in scoring position and leaving 11 men on base on Monday night, they continued to go quietly on Tuesday night, 1-for-10, 10 stranded.
The issue has plagued this team all year long, but this may be the worst possible time for it to rear its ugly head. The Red Sox are currently in a make-or-break stretch, with two series against the Astros (four in Houston, three at Fenway Park) and a weekend visit from the Los Angeles Dodgers and Mookie Betts in between.
Just two games into this 10-game gauntlet, they’re breaking. Precious ground gained in the Wild Card standings is falling away. Playing like this would make the Red Sox the embarrassment of their division, but luckily for them, the Yankees have lost nine consecutive games for the first time since September 1982.
The Red Sox can blame the umpires until the cows come home, but umpires have been missing calls since the dawn of time. Hoberg and Co. are only a small fraction of how and why they lost this one.
Adam Duvall homered for the second straight night for Boston.