It\u2019s hard to imagine this Red Sox season getting off to a worse start.<\/p>\n
Since coming out of the gate with a standout Opening Day performance, the Red Sox have repeatedly faceplanted over the rest of their season-opening road trip. The offense hasn\u2019t hit, the starting pitching hasn\u2019t come through and the supposedly improved defense has remained prone to gaffes and costly miscues.<\/p>\n
And Wednesday, not even their ace was able to save them.<\/p>\n
Garrett Crochet endured an uncharacteristically shaky outing in Wednesday afternoon\u2019s series finale, allowing five earned runs over five innings in the Red Sox\u2019s eventual 6-4 loss to the Houston Astros. Carlos Correa\u2019s three-run home run in the fifth inning was the knockout blow, and the Red Sox bats couldn\u2019t fight back to avoid the sweep.<\/p>\n
Now the Red Sox will have a day to lick their wounds before returning to Fenway Park for Friday\u2019s home opener mired in a five-game losing streak.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot good, not good,\u201d Red Sox manager Alex Cora said postgame. \u201cWe talk about cleaning up a lot of stuff, putting the ball in play, playing good defense, running the bases better, and overall this whole week wasn\u2019t great.\u201d<\/p>\n
It seemed early on like Wednesday might be different. The Red Sox took an early 1-0 after Jarren Duran led off the game with a single, reached second on a Masataka Yoshida walk and scored on an RBI knock by Willson Contreras.<\/p>\n
Even after the Astros punched back with two runs in the bottom of the first, getting back-to-back doubles by Yordan Alvarez and Isaac Paredes and an RBI single from Christian Walker, the Red Sox answered with another run in the second to tie it at 2-2. Isiah Kiner-Falefa reached on a fielder\u2019s choice, moved to third on a Connor Wong double and scored on a Duran groundout.<\/p>\n
Crochet sent the Astros down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the second, and from there the lefty was off to the races. He drew a double play in the third to avoid trouble after allowing a single and a hit by pitch, struck out the side in the fourth and got a quick out to start the top of the fifth.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when the trouble began.<\/p>\n
Jose Altuve hit a single to start the rally, and Crochet hit Alvarez for his second hit batsman of the game. The lefty struck out Paredes for the second out and then got ahead of Correa 1-2 in the count, but Crochet couldn\u2019t put the three-time All-Star away and left a sweeper down and in that Correa crushed 402 feet to left field.<\/p>\n
He finished with five runs (four earned) allowed over five innings on six hits, no walks, two hit batsmen and seven strikeouts.<\/p>\n
Former Red Sox catcher Christian Vazquez later extended the Astros lead with a solo home run off Danny Coulombe, which was the 11th home run allowed by Red Sox pitchers through the first six games of the season. Boston got a run back in the eighth when Wilyer Abreu hit his third homer of the season for a solo shot, and Roman Anthony came off the bench and hit an opposite field pinch hit homer to lead off the top of the ninth, but the club couldn\u2019t close the gap any further.<\/p>\n
Boston is now averaging 2.83 runs per game through the first week of the season, and entering Wednesday the club ranked 26th in MLB in runs scored. The club also struck out 13 times for the second straight game and punched out 38 times total in the series.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re chasing a lot, we are, and we\u2019re getting beat in the zone,\u201d Cora said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been chasing too but I think we\u2019ve been getting beat in the zone so that\u2019s something we have to adjust right away. We have to be ready for Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now the Red Sox return home hoping being back at Fenway Park can help turn their fortunes around, and\u00a0that Sonny Gray can keep the San Diego Padres at bay when he takes the mound for Friday\u2019s home opener.<\/p>\n
Narvaez scratched<\/p>\n
Alex Cora has been saying for days that Carlos Narvaez would start Wednesday\u2019s series finale against the Astros, specifically saying he got Tuesday night off so that he\u2019d be fresh to catch Crochet for the afternoon start. So it raised eyebrows when Narvaez was scratched from Wednesday\u2019s lineup and Connor Wong was penciled in to catch for the second straight game.<\/p>\n
Asked by reporters prior to the game, Cora declined to explain why Narvaez was removed, only saying it wasn\u2019t injury related.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s keep it between me and Carlos,\u201d Cora said when asked if the move was disciplinary, according to MassLive\u2019s Christopher Smith. \u201cAnd he understands. This is something that happens on every club. It just happens to be early in the season, and I think it\u2019s the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cora said postgame he expects Narvaez to be back in the lineup on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to imagine this Red Sox season getting off to a worse start. Since coming out of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,5,48,3225,789,922,139,54,3211,4,89,793,606],"class_list":{"0":"post-658227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-astros","8":"tag-astros","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-boston-red-sox","11":"tag-carlos-correa","12":"tag-carlos-narvaez","13":"tag-garrett-crochet","14":"tag-houston","15":"tag-houston-astros","16":"tag-houstonastros","17":"tag-mlb","18":"tag-red-sox","19":"tag-roman-anthony","20":"tag-wilyer-abreu"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116333707970791448","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}