With two on and two out, Garrett Mitchell lined a single to left. Anthony fielded it on one hop, with Brice Turang two steps from third base. Third base coach Matt Erickson waved him around anyway. As Turang headed home, Anthony’s throw dribbled across the third-base line, maybe two-thirds of the way between third and home.
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Catcher Carlos Narváez had to run to the backstop to chase it. Christian Yelich — who started the play at first base — came all the way around to score with a headfirst slide, just ahead of a tag from reliever Garrett Whitlock, who covered the plate.
It was a bad error at a bad time for the Sox, who have lost three consecutive games since winning their home opener Friday. At 2-8, they have the worst record in the majors.
Willson Contreras homered in the ninth inning — his career-high-tying fifth time on base — as the Red Sox brought the potential tying run to the plate. But Trevor Story grounded out to second to end the game.
Helping shape the game: The Brewers went 16 consecutive batters without hitting the ball out of the infield. But they scored five runs during that stretch.
Contreras played with a fire that seemed to be sparked when Brewers righthander Brandon Woodruff grazed his hand with an up-and-in sinker in the third. Contreras was mad on his way to first base, and again at first base after a replay review allowed the call to stand.
For Contreras, longtime NL Central foe with the Cubs and Cardinals, it was the 24th time in 121 games that the Brewers hit him with a pitch.
When the next batter, Wilyer Abreu, sent a grounder to second for a force at second, Contreras slid hard into the bag, ripping the pant leg of shortstop David Hamilton. That brought out Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy for an extended conversation with umpires, during which Contreras kept yelling from the dugout.
When Contreras homered in the ninth he stared into the Brewers’ dugout on his way past third base.
Lefthander Jovani Morán tossed a career-high-tying three innings out of the bullpen to give the Sox a shot going into the late innings.
The Sox benefitted from some batted-ball luck, too, en route to plating five runs (three earned) in 5⅔ innings against Woodruff.
Story dropped a soft single into right field to scratch across a run in the first inning. And in the fourth, they added a pair, one on Ceddanne Rafaela’s grounder that turned into a fielding error by Hamilton, the other on Contreras’s ground-rule double that fell fair in right field and hopped over the side wall.
Story also had a sacrifice fly in the third, giving him as many RBIs in three innings as he had in the first nine games (two).
The Red Sox were on the wrong end of a bizarre series of events in the top of the fourth inning, when the Brewers sent nine batters to the plate, never hit the ball out of the infield, and scored four runs to take the lead.
It started with Brayan Bello helping Milwaukee load the bases via infield single, walk, sacrifice bunt, and another walk. That drew a mound visit from pitching coach Andrew Bailey. William Contreras’s grounder deflected off the glove of third baseman Caleb Durbin for an error and a run.
That brought in lefthander Danny Coulombe for a sequence of three lefthanded hitters. He retired none of them. Yelich’s RBI single was a hard grounder off the glove of a diving Durbin. Mitchell singled on a slow roller along the first-base line for another run. And Coulombe walked Jake Bauers to force in the last of the inherited runners.
With the Brewers threatening for more, Luis Rengifo grounded into a double play on the 10th pitch of the at-bat to end the inning.
Altogether, it made for a weird start for Bello, who was charged with four runs (three earned) in 3⅓ innings. He held Milwaukee scoreless into the fourth, but allowed multiple base runners in every frame. He was wild (four walks), but at times unhittable (17 swing-and-misses). Milwaukee had five hits and five strikeouts against him.
Tim Healey can be reached at timothy.healey@globe.com. Follow him @timbhealey.