Normally if you were facing one of the game’s best pitchers and someone told you that you’d drive up their pitch count and get them out of the game early, you’d probably feel good about your chances.
Yet while the Red Sox made Dylan Cease work, they got nothing to show for it.
The Red Sox offense spun its wheels again Tuesday, losing 6-1 to the Toronto Blue Jays despite getting plenty of traffic against Cease. Boston went 1 for 10 with runners in scoring position and stranded eight men over the first five innings alone, and those missed opportunities loomed large as Toronto steadily pulled away.
“It’s tough. We took four or five walks, obviously drove the pitch count up and gave ourselves chances. I think we had a runner in scoring position or multiple in each of the five innings he pitched,” said Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy. “We were one big hit away, some of those were one out so one or two hits away from taking a lead or a multiple-run lead there and we just couldn’t break through.”
Boston (29-41) is now 12 games under .500 again, tying the club’s season low.
Making his second start since coming off the injured list with a mild hamstring strain, Cease was in early trouble but managed to escape a first-inning bases-loaded jam unscathed. Ceddanne Rafaela singled, Wilyer Abreu walked and Jarren Duran reached on a broken bat blooper that Cease couldn’t bring down behind the mound. Caleb Durbin stepped up with a chance to do some damage but flew out to shallow center to end the threat.
Even still, Cease needed 25 pitches to navigate the first and went on to throw 24 in the second, 19 in the third and 19 in the fourth. He stood at 87 pitches heading into the fifth inning but managed to give Toronto one more, finishing with five scoreless innings on four hits, four walks and seven strikeouts over 108 pitches.
“I thought we put together solid at-bats, we couldn’t really get anything going,” Red Sox catcher Connor Wong said. “He did a great job, he’s got deception, he’s got stuff, I thought we fought pretty well we just weren’t able to scratch one in.”
It was a similar story for Payton Tolle, whose outing was also a complete tractor pull.
The Red Sox rookie needed 22 pitches to post a scoreless first, and after a fairly efficient second inning he threw another 24 in the third. A big chunk of those came in one 14-pitch at bat against Myles Straw, who he eventually got to fly out to right field.
“You’re just like, man, miss one already,” Wong said of the Straw at-bat. “There were a couple he fouled off that hit my glove and I wish I was able to hold on to one of them and not only get the punch out but keep that guy at second.”
“It was a full inning’s worth of pitches,” Tracy said. “Probably ended up taking an inning away from him at the end.”
That flyout still moved Andres Gimenez — who reached on a leadoff double after an initial out call at second base was overturned by replay — to third base, setting the table for George Springer to drive in the game’s first run with a sacrifice fly to right.
Toronto extended its lead to 3-0 in the fifth when Davis Schneider and Gimenez led off the inning with back-to-back solo home runs. It was the first time the Blue Jays hit consecutive home runs in a game this season, and after finishing the inning, Tolle wrapped up his outing with three runs allowed over five innings with four hits, two walks and six strikeouts.
“Frustrating,” Tolle said of his outing. “Long first inning, long at-bat with Straw, just didn’t execute. Just frustrating.”
Schneider came up big again his next time up to bat too. With Red Sox right-hander Tommy Kahnle now pitching in the sixth, the Blue Jays got two men on when Kazuma Okamoto walked and Nathan Lukes singled to put men at the corners with one out. Schneider stepped up and launched a high fly ball to deep center, which bounced off the Green Monster and scored Okamoto for an RBI double to make it 4-0.
Considering the Red Sox still haven’t staged more than a two-run comeback in any win this year, it felt like that may as well have been the ballgame. But as they have done quite frequently over the past few weeks, the Red Sox made a late push.
With one out in the bottom of the eighth Duran hit a solo home run — his 12th of the season — to avert the shutout. Isiah Kiner-Falefa followed with a single and Marcelo Mayer walked to bring pinch hitter Mickey Gasper to the plate as the tying run.
That prompted the Blue Jays to summon closer Louis Varland, and the right-hander struck out Gasper to end the threat.
George Springer hit a two-run home run in the top of the ninth to effectively close the door, and Varland came back for the bottom of the frame to finish the job, locking down his 13th save of the season.
Springer’s homer was also the 300th of his MLB career.
The Red Sox will give it another shot Wednesday against future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer (1-4, 10.23 ERA), who like Cease is set to make his second start since coming off the IL. Boston will answer with rookie left-hander Jake Bennett (1-2, 5.28), and first pitch is set for 6:45 p.m.