\u201cSell the team\u201d chants rang out at Fenway Park for the second consecutive game Monday night.<\/p>\n
It was the top of the fourth inning, as reliever Danny Coulombe tried in vain to clean up a bases-loaded mess left behind by starter Brayan Bello, pulled by manager Alex Cora after 3 \u2153 frenetic innings.<\/p>\n
Hours later, the Red Sox dropped the series opener to the Milwaukee Brewers 8-6.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox had entered the fourth with a 3-0 lead, a promising sign for an offense that has struggled mightily in the first two weeks of the regular season. They\u2019d jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first, on a Roman Anthony leadoff double and Trevor Story two-out RBI single.<\/p>\n
Boston tacked on a pair of runs in the bottom of the third, which Anthony led off with a single. After he was joined on the bases by walk-machine Masataka Yoshida, the inning devolved into chaos.<\/p>\n
Willson Contreras had a lengthy history with the Brewers. He spent the first ten years of his MLB career on the their NL Central rival Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals before the Red Sox acquired him from the latter during the offseason, and 23 of his 130 career hit-by-pitches came courtesy of Milwaukee pitchers.<\/p>\n
Brewers starter Brandon Woodruff, who\u2019d hit Contreras with a pitch five times before, threw a 92.9 mph sinker up and in. Hit-by-pitch No. 6.<\/p>\n
Contreras looked outraged and began shouting as he dropped his bat and began walking to first to load the bases.<\/p>\n
The Brewers challenged the call, and though the video replay appeared to show the pitch sneaking past Contreras as it reached his brother William\u2019s glove, the call stood due to lack of evidence.<\/p>\n
Brewers manager Pat Murphy next took exception to Contreras\u2019 hard slide into second base, on Wilyer Abreu\u2019s RBI force-out. Former Red Sox infielder David Hamilton, dealt to Milwaukee for third baseman Caleb Durbin, remained in the game, the left leg of his pants ripped just below the knee. Story\u2019s sacrifice fly plated the third Red Sox run before Woodruff escaped further damage.<\/p>\n
But just like the previous day\u2019s contest, in which the Red Sox took a 4-0 lead in the third and immediately gave it away over the course of the next two innings, their advantage was short-lived.<\/p>\n
Bello had stranded two Brewers per inning through three, a walk and a base hit each time. The top of the fourth began the same way, with a leadoff single by Sal Frelick and a walk to Hamilton. Blake Perkins\u2019 sacrifice bunt put both men in scoring position, and Bello\u2019s fifth walk of the night filled the diamond.<\/p>\n
A fielding error by Durbin, who dove for a William Contreras grounder that ricocheted off his glove, put Milwaukee on the board and brought Cora out to the mound.<\/p>\n
Against Coulombe, the Brewers played musical chairs around the bases like a live-action reshoot of the 1946 animated classic \u201cBaseball Bugs.\u201d Christian Yelich singled to score the second run, Garrett Mitchell\u2019s single tied the game, and Coulombe walked Jake Bauers to force in the go-ahead run before getting Luis Rengifo to ground into an inning-ending double play.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox quickly re-tied the game in the bottom of the inning, on a Durbin leadoff double and fielding error by his trade counterpart, Hamilton.<\/p>\n
Woodruff sharpened his work as the innings progressed. After Contreras\u2019 game-tying ground-rule double in the fourth, Woodruff retired his last six batters. He needed five pitches to get Story, Marcelo Mayer, and Durbin to fly out to center 1-2-3 in the fifth.<\/p>\n
The crowd of 35,107 restarted their \u201cSell the team\u201d chants with renewed vigor in the top of the eighth, as Garrett Mitchell\u2019s two-out RBI single and a throwing error by Anthony in left-field put the Brewers back on top 7-5.<\/p>\n
Fans were exiting en masse in the top of the ninth when Frelick\u2019s RBI single off Rule 5 rookie Ryan Watson, fumbled by reigning AL Gold Glove centerfielder Ceddanne Rafaela, increased Milwaukee\u2019s lead to three. The stragglers who remained renewed the \u201cSell the team\u201d chants for a third time.<\/p>\n
The Boston bats which had shown so much life early on, went quietly in the sixth, seventh \u2013 wasting Yoshida\u2019s leadoff walk and Contreras\u2019 subsequent single off reliever Aaron Ashby \u2013 and the eighth.<\/p>\n
But Contreras was a man on a mission. Facing Angel Zerpa with two outs in the ninth, he sent a 1-1 changeup soaring into the metalwork of the Green Monster\u2019s left light tower to bring Boston within two runs. Contreras\u2019 five times on base tied his career-high for the fourth time.<\/p>\n
Abreu followed with a single before Story ground out to end the game after three hours and 18 minutes.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox are 2-8 to begin the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSell the team\u201d chants rang out at Fenway Park for the second consecutive game Monday night. It was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2401],"tags":[858,5,48,5172,136,843,59,4280,4,1035],"class_list":{"0":"post-667441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-brewers","8":"tag-alex-cora","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-boston-red-sox","11":"tag-brayan-bello","12":"tag-brewers","13":"tag-milwaukee","14":"tag-milwaukee-brewers","15":"tag-milwaukeebrewers","16":"tag-mlb","17":"tag-trevor-story"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116360994334290891","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667441","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=667441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}