Sox drop third in row
Rally but fall in 10 to Jays
TORONTO — Remember when the Red Sox got off to that scorching hot start?
The start’s on pause. And the Red Sox are cooling off fast.
The Red Sox fell to the Blue Jays, 4-3, in 10 innings last night, their third loss in a row.
A team that started 17-2 is now 17-5, still good enough for first place in the AL East but now the Blue Jays are just three games behind and the surging Yankees are one game behind Toronto.
Given a few developments, the loss felt like it could have been prevented after Curtis Granderson’s one-out, upper-deck home run off Red Sox closer Craig Kimbrel lifted the Blue Jays to victory.
Down by three runs after two innings, and trailing by two entering the ninth, when the Red Sox mounted an impressive rally, scoring two runs to tie the game.
However, a bad send home of Eduardo Nunez by third base coach Carlos Febles cut the rally off at a tie game.
Manager Alex Cora had no problem with Febles sending Nunez, who is not running that well and is not fast to begin with. Plus, with Mookie Betts on deck, he could have been held at third base without anyone questioning the decision, considering left fielder Granderson was throwing shortly after Nunez turned for home.
Nunez was out by a lot of meters.
“Aggressive. Two outs, you know,” said Cora. “The guy has to make the play. It’s an aggressive one, but you have to challenge Granderson. We’ve been challenging Granderson for more than five years. He made a perfect throw and threw him out.”
As for Kimbrel, he was pitching for only the second time on this trip and also in a non-save situation. Rust, however, was not on his postgame quotesheet.
“No, not at all,” said Kimbrel. “You talk about time off and things like that, at the end of the day, those are just excuses and when you have a chance to win the game or keep the game going, I’ve got to do my job and I didn’t do that today.”
Red Sox starter Rick Porcello pitched well, but not nearly as well as Toronto’s J.A. Happ. Happ capitalized on a Red Sox offense that has not recovered from being no-hit by Oakland’s Sean Manaea on Saturday.
Last night, the Sox managed four hits against Happ, who struck out 10, including Andrew Benintendi three times. Benintendi then whiffed once more in the eighth against reliever Ryan Tepera. Happ also did not walk a batter.
With one notable exception, Porcello mostly breezed through his seven innings, striking out nine while walking an uncustomarily high three batters. He allowed three hits.
Coming into the game, Porcello had allowed only one run over his last 191⁄3 innings. That all changed in a hurry in the second inning, although Porcello had relatively little to do with the three-run frame aside from a leadoff walk.
Third baseman Rafael Devers made one bad choice, opting to make an off-balance throw home that was off-target rather than go for an out at first base. It cost the game’s first run. He later made a good throw home for an out, but the first run of the game hurt.
And with two outs, Granderson hit a very sharp groundball that gobbled up Devers, the ball bouncing off his glove into very shallow field. By the time Devers caught up to it, both base-runners had scored for the 3-0 lead.
“A leadoff walk, that was the biggest thing,” said Porcello. “Raffi made a great play on the second one, cut the run off at home but the leadoff walk was the biggest thing, putting the runner on without making him earn it. Could have done better there for sure.”
The Red Sox scored their first run in the sixth inning on an RBI single by Hanley Ramirez.