This past week’s west coast swing didn’t get off to a good start, but for most of Wednesday it looked like the Red Sox were going to finish the trip on a high note.
Then the bullpen ran out of steam and the club seemingly embraced all its bad habits at the worst possible time.
The Red Sox came unglued in the late innings, allowing six unanswered runs from the sixth inning onwards to lose 6-3 to the Seattle Mariners. John Schreiber allowed four runs over an inning-plus of work, and a pair of defensive breakdowns helped the Mariners put the game away with a four-run rally in the bottom of the seventh.
With the loss Boston finishes its road trip 2-4 and will now limp back to Boston to regroup ahead of a critical 10-game homestand set to begin Friday.
Things started off as well as Boston could have hoped for. Jarren Duran put the Red Sox ahead with a two-run home run in the top of the third inning, and Masataka Yoshida added an RBI double in the fifth to make it 5-0.
Kutter Crawford, meanwhile, enjoyed another strong performance on the mound, throwing five scoreless innings with four hits, one walk and five strikeouts. The trouble was he only threw 81 pitches, and while that’s been a typical workload for Crawford since he rejoined the rotation, it left the bullpen with a lot of work to do and most of the club’s top relievers unavailable after pitching Tuesday night.
Red Sox manager Alex Cora said they gave no consideration to having Crawford go back out for the sixth.
“No,” Cora said. “Eighty-something pitches, he had to grind, so we went to one of our best relievers.”
The problem was Schreiber, who was entrusted to bridge that gap, didn’t have it on Wednesday.
Seattle greeted the right-hander with a Eugenio Suarez double and then a Cal Raleigh two-run home run to cut the deficit to 3-2. Schreiber was able to escape without further incident, but he was called back out for the seventh and didn’t record an out, allowing a leadoff walk and a single to put the club in a tight spot.
Richard Bleier couldn’t hold the lead from there. Cade Marlowe and Julio Rodriguez had a pair of RBI singles to tie and take the lead respectively, with Rodriguez’s coming after Rafael Devers and Yu Chang collided trying to field a routine grounder to shortstop. Suarez added an RBI single of his own to cap off a 3 for 4 performance, and then he and Rodriguez finished off the scoring by executing a double steal, with Rodriguez beating the throw home after Suarez made it safely to second.
All told, it was an ugly and dispiriting finish to a real bummer of a road trip.
Besides missing another opportunity to gain ground in the standings, the Red Sox also blew a chance to secure a potentially critical playoff tiebreaker. The Red Sox and Mariners finished their season series tied 3-3, which means if the two were to finish tied in the AL Wild Card standings at season’s end, the tiebreaker would go to whoever finishes with a better record against divisional opponents.
Right now the Red Sox are 16-11 against the AL East and the Mariners 15-11 against the AL West, but the Mariners have a much easier schedule the rest of the way.
For now the Red Sox (56-51) have more immediate concerns. The club will have Thursday off before starting a critical three-game series at Fenway Park against top AL Wild Card competitor Toronto. After that Boston will host two of the American League’s worst teams, the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers, before hitting the road to face NL East basement-dweller Washington.
Needless to say the Red Sox have a golden opportunity to make a huge push, and how they capitalize on this upcoming stretch could go a long way towards determining if they play in October.
Cora told reporters before the game that the Red Sox hope to have all three of their rehabbing pitchers back with the big league club by the start of the upcoming road trip, which is scheduled to begin on Aug. 15 against Washington.
Chris Sale, who is scheduled to start Sunday for the WooSox in Syracuse, will return as a starter and is expected back first, and Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock will begin their rehab assignments this weekend, though their big league role has yet to be determined.
Trevor Story went 1 for 5 with an RBI double in Worcester’s 7-6 win on Wednesday and also played seven innings at shortstop. Cora said it’s possible Story could be activated in Boston this weekend, but that isn’t a definite.
After a torrid July in which he broke out as one of the most productive hitters in all of baseball, Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas was honored Wednesday as American League Rookie of the Month.
The 23-year-old went 23 for 66 (.348) with seven home runs, 13 RBI, four doubles, a triple, 11 walks, 16 runs scored and a 1.200 OPS over 21 games, leading all AL rookies in homers, slugging percentage (.758), OPS, walks, extra base hits (12) and total bases (50) while ranking near the top of the leaderboard in most other major offensive categories. Casas hit safely in 16 of 21 games and had a stretch of eight consecutive games in which he reached base between July 6-18.
Casas is the first Red Sox player to win Rookie of the Month since Bobby Dalbec in August 2021.