Red Sox swept by Rays with embarrassing 17-8 loss
Every time you think it can’t get any worse for the Red Sox, it does.
Bad pitching, sloppy defense, not enough offense. Rinse, wash, repeat. It’s the same old story for the Red Sox, who put a cap on a lousy week at Fenway Park with their most embarrassing performance of the season, falling 17-8 to the Rays as they were swept in four games by their division rival.
It got so bad that infielder Jose Peraza came on to pitch in the ninth inning and gave up a pair of hits before he left the game after getting drilled in the leg by a line drive. Then, catcher Kevin Plawecki took the mound to record the final two outs.
“I think once Peraza got smoked in the knee, that’s about as bad as it gets,” Red Sox manager Ron Roenicke said. “You’re trying to get through a game and he gets smoked.”
That’s the 2020 Red Sox, who are lucky that fans aren’t allowed in the ballpark this season.
The loss dropped the Red Sox to 6-13, the worst mark in the American League, and it could get even uglier. Next up? A four-game series against the first-place Yankees in the Bronx, starting off against pitcher Gerrit Cole on Friday.
“I really don’t need to make a message after that,” Roenicke said. “They know. When you see heads hanging after a game, they realize that. We’ll have an advance meeting tomorrow and I’ll probably say some things to them but it’s just the way it’s going, just going through a bad point. We keep talking about how we need to turn it around and we’re not doing that. Guys just need to relax and play how they’re capable.”
Here’s how it all went wrong for the Red Sox:
Kyle Hart shelled in debut: There was at least a small dose of hope and excitement going into Thursday as the 27-year-old Hart made his first career MLB start, but though he called it an “unforgettable experience,” it turned ugly.
The lefty issued a four-pitch walk to his first batter, and though he wasn’t helped by an error, went on to give up a pair of runs in the first. After a clean second, it went downhill quickly for Hart in the third as he was unable to record an out after serving up back-to-back homers. He exited the game after two-plus innings as he gave up seven hits, seven runs (five earned), walked three and struck out four.
Hart showed some promise in locating his second pitches well at times, generating five swings and misses with his slider. But he paid the price of missing with his low-velocity fastball, with both homers coming off that pitch.
“That’s where the frustration sets in,” Hart said. “You can work around walks, but those two-strike home runs when I got guys in defense mode or you’re supposed to have guys in defensive swing mode are totally unacceptable.”
Rays on a different level: It must have pained Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom to watch what unfolded this week, given that he helped build the Rays into the machine that dominated his new team this week.
The Rays were simply hitting batting practice this week. They scored 42 runs on 59 hits and nine homers, including four blasts on Thursday. Two of them came off the bat of Hunter Renfroe, who crushed a pitch off Marcus Walden in the sixth that might have landed on the Massachusetts Turnpike. The usually reliable Walden didn’t record an out in the Rays’ six-run sixth.
The Rays continued their dominance at Fenway, too. Since the start of last season, they’ve won 13 out of the last 14 in Boston, including the last eight in a row.
The adventures of Rafael Devers continue: As bad as Red Sox pitching was this week, they certainly weren’t helped by the defense behind them. They seemed to make a bizarre error in every game of the series.
On Thursday, Devers’ continuing struggles at third base were magnified. The 23-year-old already entered the game tied for the most errors committed by all third basemen, and he took the lead with three fielding errors in the loss. Two of them came in the fourth, one in which he sailed a throw intended for second into the outfield, and another that he picked up bare-handed on the run that he fired past first.
“He really takes those errors hard and he doesn’t want to let the team down and as hard as he works at it, he wants to be perfect at what he does,” Roenicke said. “When these things happen, you can see it in the body language, but I know he’s going to continue to work, he’s going to continue to get better, and we’ll get him in a streak where he’s going to play really good defense like he did for a long time last year.”
Sox infielder Jonathan Arauz also committed an error in the first on what should have been a double play to help Hart get out of the inning. Five of the Rays’ 16 runs Thursday were unearned.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2DTQPz0
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