Between the gloomy, humid rain and poor showing by the Red Sox in a 6-2 loss, there was little to celebrate on Independence Day at Fenway Park.
Boston’s baseball team is in a difficult spot; the lineup is woefully inconsistent, and they’ve lost most of their starting pitching to injuries, which also hurts and overtires the bullpen, which is also missing key contributors. Even the best farm systems would struggle to find three or four meaningful, legitimate replacements for a rotation, but for the Red Sox, who began the season with more starters than they knew what to do with, it’s been an almost absurd turn of events that their surplus hasn’t been enough.
Brayan Bello could’ve started against the Texas Rangers on Tuesday afternoon, but with the rest of the rotation injured, demoted to the bullpen, or on the paternity list (James Paxton), Alex Cora wouldn’t risk pushing his young star.
“We have to take care of him,” the Red Sox manager explained. “He’s been pitching seven, eight (innings each game).”
It makes sense to handle Bello with care. He’s one of the organization’s most promising homegrown starting pitchers in years, not to mention only healthy starts at the moment. The Red Sox cannot afford to lose another arm from the rotation, nor can they be cavalier about Bello’s development.
Instead, Cora cobbled together his team’s second consecutive bullpen game. He sent Brennan Bernardino, Kaleb Ort, Chris Murphy, Justin Garza, Brandon Walter, and Tayler Scott out to face the American League West’s first-place lineup.
But unlike Sunday, when Garrett Whitlock’s sudden departure after one inning forced a pitching pivot, the Red Sox couldn’t pull off a victory. They didn’t even make it close.
The game began promisingly enough. Serving as the opener, Bernardino began the game by getting the Rangers 1-2-3 in what was technically his first career start.
After going 5-for-5 on Sunday, Jarren Duran led off with a triple and quickly scored, then doubled in his next at-bat to extend his streak to 7-for-7. Since six of his seven hits were for extra bases, he became the 10th player in franchise history to collect five or more doubles in a two-game span; Mike Lowell (May ’06) and Nomar Garciaparra (August 1999) are the only other Red Sox to achieve the feat in the last 30 years.
Duran’s six extra-base hits over his last two games put him in conversation with some of the organization’s greatest hitters. Babe Ruth became the first Red Sox player to collect six extra-base hits in 1918; Duran is only the eighth player who’s matched the Bambino’s feat.
“I’m just trying to ride the wave,” he said postgame, adding that his goal is to do whatever will help the team win.
Unfortunately, the Red Sox needed a lot more to bring home a win, and couldn’t put the pieces together. After taking an immediate lead in the bottom of the first and promptly blowing it in the top of the second when Kaleb Ort allowed a 3-run homer, the Boston bats went silent. Rangers starter Dane Dunning gave up six hits and a walk over his six innings, and held the Red Sox to that lone run in the first.
As drizzle turned into rain, and Massachusetts State Police sent out an alert to evacuate the Boston Pops Orchestra’s July 4th event area on the Charles River, the Red Sox wasted chance after chance; despite matching the Rangers’ 10 hits, the home team was 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position, and left nine men on base.
And when they finally showed signs of life, plating their second run of the game in the bottom of the eighth, Fenway finally cowed to the rain that had steadily worsened throughout the afternoon, and went into a weather delay.
“It got pretty sloppy out there,” Connor Wong said.
As difficult as the conditions have been at Fenway over the last month, the Red Sox catcher takes a logical view of the situation.
“It was definitely coming down hard,” he said, adding, “They gotta play in that too, so I don’t think there’s any excuse there.”
107 minutes after pressing pause, the bottom of the eighth resumed and quickly ended. Scott made his Red Sox debut, and got the Rangers to go 1-2-3 in the ninth. Christian Arroyo led off the bottom of their last-chance inning with a single, only to be stranded, too.
The Red Sox look defeated far too often, but it’s not hard to see why. Since June 1, they’ve lost Chris Sale, Joely Rodríguez, Corey Kluber, Reese McGuire, Pablo Reyes, Tanner Houck, and Whitlock.
Nick Pivetta has turned his season around since moving to the bullpen. Despite the holes in their rotation and his years of experience as a starter, the Red Sox prefer to keep him in the bullpen, even in a long relief role. Cora would only say that the right-hander is continuing to build up stamina to pitch deeper into games.
Healthy pitching is what set 2018 and 2021 Red Sox apart from 2019, 2020, 2022, and 2023 is fast joining the latter grouping. When led by Bello, Paxton, Sale, and Whitlock, the Red Sox are 26-17, an impressive .605 winning percentage. Anyone else starting for them results in the inverse, a 17-26 (.395) record that’s made a clear difference in their season.
Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have much choice in the matter.
