Wednesday was shaping up to be one of the Red Sox\u2019s worst offensive efforts of the season. Through seven innings the club had been completely dominated by Tampa Bay Rays starter Drew Rasmussen, and the Red Sox got absolutely nothing from the top of their lineup the first three times through the order.<\/p>\n
But unlike so often this season, the Red Sox managed to show a little fight late.<\/p>\n
Trailing by five heading into the top of the eighth, the Red Sox rallied for four runs to get back into the game but saw their comeback bid fall short in what wound up being a 7-5 loss to the Rays.<\/p>\n
Caleb Durbin hit two solo home runs from the eighth inning on and Ceddanne Rafaela hit a three-run home run that cut the deficit to one, but the Rays responded with a two-run home run by Cedric Mullins in the bottom of the eighth that effectively put the game out of reach.<\/p>\n
As a result the Rays completed the three-game sweep and sent the Red Sox back to Boston riding a four-game losing streak.<\/p>\n
Before the eighth inning, the Red Sox had no answer for Rasmussen.<\/p>\n
Jarren Duran, Rafaela and Abreu, who batted 1-2-3 atop the Red Sox order, collectively went 0 for 9 with nine strikeouts their first three times up. According to NESN, Wednesday marked the first time since at least 1901 that an MLB club\u2019s top three hitters struck out in each of their first three plate appearances.<\/p>\n
The rest of the lineup didn\u2019t fare much better against Rasmussen, who finished seven shutout innings with a career-high 13 strikeouts, two hits and one walk.<\/p>\n
Durbin hit a third-inning single, Masataka Yoshida singled in the fifth and Mickey Gasper drew Boston\u2019s first walk since the second inning of Monday\u2019s game in the seventh. Offensively that was all Boston could muster against the Rays starter, and the closest the club came to a scoring chance came in the third when Isiah Kiner-Falefa reached on a fielder\u2019s choice, stole second but was caught stealing third to smother what could have been a potential rally.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Red Sox starter Jake Bennett couldn\u2019t keep the Rays from causing trouble on the bases.<\/p>\n
Called up to fill Brayan Bello\u2019s spot in the rotation, the rookie left-hander pitched well early but couldn\u2019t keep the Rays at bay once Tampa Bay started getting traffic. The Rays took a 1-0 lead in the third after Nick Fortes doubled, moved to third on a sacrifice bunt and scored on a Taylor Walls sacrifice fly to right.<\/p>\n
Then the Rays really seized the momentum in the fifth. Fortes led off with another double, Walls singled and Yandy Diaz had an RBI single to extend the lead. Austin Slater followed with an RBI double, Junior Caminero was intentionally walked to load the bases and set up a force play and Ryan Vilade had a sacrifice fly to cap off the rally.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay scored again in the sixth on a Diaz RBI single to make it 5-0, and given that the Red Sox haven\u2019t even overcome a deficit of three runs to win a game this season, at that point it felt like a wrap.<\/p>\n
And yet, the Red Sox found a way to make it interesting.<\/p>\n
Durbin averted the shutout with his leadoff solo shot, his second home run of the season and his first that didn\u2019t come off a position player. Isiah Kiner-Falefa then drew a walk and Duran hit a single to end the top of the lineup\u2019s abysmal skid, putting men at first and third with one out.<\/p>\n
That brought up Rafaela, who hit a three-run bomb to left off Steven Matz, but the Red Sox couldn\u2019t get any closer. Abreu and Contreras grounded out to end the inning and Tampa Bay extended its lead in the bottom of the eighth when Fortes (4 for 4, two doubles) singled and Mullins took Red Sox reliever Justin Slaten deep with a two-run shot to effectively put the game away.<\/p>\n
Durbin came through again with his second solo shot with two outs in the top of the ninth, but that was as close as the Red Sox could get. As a result the Red Sox are now 27-39 on the season, 1-33 when trailing after seven innings and 0-36 when trailing after eight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wednesday was shaping up to be one of the Red Sox\u2019s worst offensive efforts of the season. Through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[5,48,3615,1396,1999,49841,604,4,297,89,2550,68,2551,2549,606],"class_list":["post-722593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa-bay-rays","tag-baseball","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-caleb-durbin","tag-ceddanne-rafaela","tag-drew-rasmussen","tag-jake-bennett","tag-jarren-duran","tag-mlb","tag-rays","tag-red-sox","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampabay","tag-tampabayrays","tag-wilyer-abreu"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116727569691227241","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722593","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=722593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}