Sox drop series to lowly O’s
Tied with Mariners for second Wild Card spot
The Red Sox are ending the season the way they started it, getting exposed by the Baltimore Orioles.
After getting swept by the Orioles in the opening series back in April, the Sox played better than anybody could have predicted over the next 3 1/2 months.
But after they faded in the late summer, they left themselves with one final challenge: knock off the lowly Orioles and Nationals and punch their ticket to the postseason.
Instead, the Sox showed up to Camden Yards looking flat. They dropped the first game of the series, despite having Chris Sale on the mound. Nathan Eovaldi’s gem carried them in the second game. But in the series finale on Thursday night, the Sox were held quiet by a pitcher with an ERA over 7.00 as they lost, 6-2, and took a series defeat.
“We’ve been talking about winning series and we haven’t won the last two,” manager Alex Cora said. “This one wasn’t good at all.”
The Sox’ loss puts them two games behind the Yankees, tied with the Mariners and one game up on the Blue Jays in the Wild Card standings. The Mariners have three left against the Angels, the Jays have three against the Orioles and the Sox have three against the Nationals.
“I think we’re ready to go to Washington, to be honest,” said shortstop Xander Bogaerts. “They outplayed us here. It’s a bad time for us to be doing that, playing worse than the Orioles. Obviously we need it more than them at this point. Let’s get it out of here, man, get some good sleep and come back at it tomorrow.”
Before the series, Fan Graphs listed the Red Sox’ playoff odds at 87.5%. After the series, their odds dropped to 56%.
Nick Pivetta got the start on Thursday and looked strong in the early innings, striking out the side in the first. But he began the third by walking Tyler Nevin, son of Yankees coach Phil Nevin, allowing a single to Pat Valaika and later serving up a three-run homer to Ryan Mountcastle, who got a firstpitch fastball on the inner edge and clobbered it for his 33rd home run of the season.
“It was the right pitch, right location, he was able to just get his hands in and put a good swing on the ball,” Pivetta said.
The Red Sox never recovered.
They scored just once off Orioles lefty Alexander Wells, who entered the game with a 7.61 ERA. Cora said he benched Bobby Dalbec in favor of Kyle Schwarber because he hoped the Sox would knock Wells out of the game early and get to the O’s heavy-right-handed bullpen.
Instead, Pivetta was knocked out at 4 2/3 innings while Wells threw six innings of one-run ball, allowing just three hits.
The only run the Sox got off Wells was a first-pitch, leadoff home run by Kiké Hernandez to start the game.
Garrett Richards took over in the sixth inning and allowed a pair of singles, threw a wild pitch to advance the runner and then gave up a two-run single to Nevin, who was playing in just his third big-league game.
It was a dagger that appeared to stun the Red Sox, who couldn’t get anything going the rest of the game.
This was supposed to be an easy set of games against an Orioles team that has 107 losses and is averaging close to six runs allowed per game. But the Sox offense looked dead in Baltimore this week.
Facing three starters considered well below-average by most statistics, the Sox scored just eight runs in three games.
“A little surprised,” Cora said. “The way we started today, we started off fast, and we were putting good atbats and then all of a sudden, just kind of like two days ago, we put some empty atbats. We weren’t able to slow down the game. And that’s the beauty of this game, right? There’s not a clock. You can slow it down as long as you want to, work counts, grind at-bats, and put pressure on the opposition. And for a while there, we didn’t do that. All of sudden, you look up and you’re in the sixth inning.”
The Sox struck out just three times on Thursday but continuously failed to make solid contact against hittable pitches. NESN color man Dennis Eckersley couldn’t believe a 3-0 fastball at 86 mph that J.D. Martinez mishit for a first-inning fly out. It was a constant theme throughout.
Schwarber was on base three times but had nobody to drive him in. Bogaerts grounded into two double plays that killed a pair of rally opportunities.
“Just not getting it done,” Bogaerts said. “The quality of my at-bats have been bad ... very unproductive at-bats, it sucks, bro. It sucks. I have three more games to get going and try to help this team turn it around.”