Red Sox’ disappointing slide continues with brutal series loss to Tigers

On the verge of being swept by the Rays last weekend, de facto Red Sox captain Xander Bogaerts, as his team dropped out of first place for the first time in more than a month, sensed some trouble and pleaded for a win.

That sense of urgency still hasn’t seemed to get through to the rest of the team.

If a sweep to the Rays won’t do it, perhaps what unfolded in Detroit this week will finally wake up the Red Sox. A night after snapping a season-long five-game losing streak, they took a step backwards Thursday with another lifeless effort in an 8-1 loss as they dropped two out of three to the sub-.500 Tigers.

With four games in Toronto against the surging Blue Jays this weekend, the Red Sox taking a series victory from the Tigers was important. Instead, their woes continued with their seventh loss in nine games, a stretch in which they’ve posted a run differential of minus-28. They’re 9-10 since the All-Star break.

A week since the trade deadline, the Red Sox (64-46) are still in serious need of changes somewhere as their rotation continues to be exposed and offensive problems puzzlingly go on.

On Thursday, it was just more of the same. Martin Perez once again failed to deliver as he pitched just 1 1/3 innings, tying his shortest start of the season as he handed the Tigers an early 3-0 lead. The Red Sox were looking up for the rest of the afternoon.

Once a bright spot early this season at the bottom of the rotation, Perez has become a liability with a 7.13 ERA in his last 11 starts. Alex Cora and his staff will be talking about making adjustments to their rotation soon as Chris Sale likely makes his return next week, and it’s fair to wonder how that impacts Perez.

But the lefty certainly wasn’t the only one to blame as the offense continued to come up short. They were shut out until the eighth, when they loaded the bases with one out and scored just one run on Alex Verdugo’s sac fly. Bobby Dalbec followed with an inning-ending strikeout, a microcosm of the day at the plate as they went for 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position.

The Red Sox were well within striking distance after Phillips Valdez cleaned up Perez’s mess. He inherited the bases loaded with one out in the second and escaped allowing just one run to cross, and he went on to retire all eight batters he faced.

But newly acquired reliever Hansel Robles replaced him in the fifth and wasn’t sharp. Jeimer Candelario’s two-out ground-rule double and Victor Reyes’ second triple of the afternoon gave the Tigers a 6-0 lead and they didn’t look back.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3CnNZvw