MILWAUKEE — If the Red Sox had entered into a secret pact to determine how many different ways they could lose games, then their three-game sweep at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers would make more sense.
After all, each day the Red Sox found creative ways to extend a losing streak to five straight.
In the opener, they wasted a fine start from Garrett Crochet and registered yet another one-run loss. On Tuesday, they got terrific work from their bullpen…until they didn’t, culminating with a blown save in the ninth and a walkoff grand slam in the 10th.
And yet, Wednesday somehow represented a new low. The Red Sox committed a total of three errors, but even that didn’t begin to fully account for their on-field ineptitude.
Kristian Campbell’s errant throw home allowed the Brewers to tie the game in the bottom of the 10th, and also moved two runners over, with the lead one eventually scoring on a sacrifice fly to center.
But the error total doesn’t reflect some of the mental miscues and fundamental sloppiness that sometimes corrupts struggling teams.
Case in point: Justin Slaten was late in covering first on a ground ball to first baseman Nick Sogard in the fateful 10th.
“Inexcusable,” lamented Slaten. “That’s Day 1 stuff. You get taught to get to the bag when you first get on the mound for Kid Pitch and you absolutely can’t allow that to happen, especially in that situation. That’s just bad, bad baseball.
“Nick did exactly what he should have done – field the ball and get it to me. I just didn’t get to the bag. One hundred percent my fault.”
There was plenty to go around on this getaway day. Jarren Duran misplayed a line drive hit directly at him in left in the fifth leading to an unearned run. Ceddanne Rafaela, who otherwise had a sparkling day (three hits, including a homer, and a magnificent catch in center to take away extra bases) nonetheless ran into an out when he failed to notice that third base was already occupied by a teammate in the fourth.
Finally, there was Campbell, guilty of being too aggressive when he fired home in the 10th in an attempt to cut down the tying run when a 4-6-3 double play might have been the better choice. Either way, if Campbell was going to throw home, he should not have fired it way wide of catcher Carlos Narvaez.
“We didn’t play well today,” said Alex Cora in masterful understatement before ticking off the laundry list of errors — mental and physical — that he watched. “The score will say it was a good baseball game, but we didn’t play well today.”
Granted, the roster now features three rookies as everyday players, some others learning new positions and the team’s de facto leader and top performer from the first two months is lost for significant time.
But if the Red Sox are going to try to remain in contention with the current players, the execution has to improve.
In the eighth, for instance, Cora had Trevor Story put down a sacrifice bunt for the first time in nine seasons. The bunt moved the potential go-ahead run into scoring position, but at the bottom of the order, two strikeouts followed and Sogard, the baserunner, was left marooned at second.
“We’ve got to play better,” said Cora. “That’s the bottom line. Overall, as far as like the fundamentals and clean baseball, they were a lot better than us. I think we’re doing everything possible to get ready for games, but we’ve got to execute.
“We’ve just got to be better. That’s the bottom line, from top to bottom, from the manager down to the players.”
Across the clubhouse, Story, one of the team’s leaders, remained resolute in his outlook.
“We’ve got to find a way to win these close games,” he said, as the team dropped to 6-15 in one-run contests and 0-5 in extra inning road games. “We haven’t done it. We feel like we should be winning these games, but it’s not getting done. We’ve got to look inward and find the adjustments to make it happen.
”What I do know is there’s a lot of baseball left. No one’s quitting, no one’s accepting that this is what we are.”
The cumulative effect of the sweep, and in particular, how the latest one came about, left an eerily quiet clubhouse and some players literally at a loss for words.
“It sucks,” concluded Slaten. “Nobody in here is happy about anything. People are pissed. I don’t know any other way to describe it. It just sucks.”
The Red Sox indeed have to be better, but only by default, since it’s inconceivable that they could be worse.
