TAMPA, Fla. – For the last week, the Red Sox could at least make some excuses for this miserable stretch.
It was horribly frigid and wet at Fenway Park for nearly the entire first homestand, which included a rainout and resulting doubleheader during the opening series with the St. Louis Cardinals, and several extra-inning games. Boston lost starting catcher Connor Wong to a hand fracture last Monday. Rafael Devers barely had a spring training and is still working out the kinks. They’re grinding through a stretch of 20 games in 21 days to begin the season.
So on, so forth.
But as they lost to the Tampa Bay Rays 16-1 in Monday night’s series opener, even the most valid excuses died on the warning track.
Facing this Rays team, which was displaced by Hurricane Milton last fall and forced to sublet the Yankees’ spring training complex for the season, the Red Sox didn’t pitch, didn’t hit, and didn’t field.
Last year, batters searching for that big hit against Tanner Houck came up empty nearly every time. In a career-high 30 starts, he only let 11 balls leave the yard. He also dominated Tampa Bay batters last season, posting a 1.08 ERA and holding them to just two earned runs over 16.2 innings in three starts against the Rays.
On Monday night, the Rays tore into the Red Sox righty from the very first pitch, which leadoff man Yandy Díaz blasted 415 feet for a home run. The Rays were up 5-0 after the second, and ran away with it in the third, tacking on another nine runs. Their 14 runs and 13 hits in the first three frames are both franchise records. According to Rays media relations, it was the second time in franchise history that every hitter in the lineup collected a run and RBI.
“Not good,” a downcast Houck said postgame. “Not a good day all-around.”
The bulk of the damage belonged to Houck – a new career-high 12 runs (11 earned) on 10 hits, two walks, and only one strikeout in 2.1 innings, his shortest start ever – who allowed the most runs by a Red Sox starter since Galen Cisco on July 27, 1962.
“Seems like their game plan was on-point against him,” said manager Alex Cora, though he noted that he didn’t think Houck was tipping his pitches. “If you look at the balls they hit hard, they were in the middle of the plate. Of course, there were some balls that went by, we didn’t play good defense behind him, so I don’t know, just good approach.”
The Red Sox defense also continues to look more Swiss-cheese than Swiss Army Knife. Several fielding decisions veered into error territory, but Alex Bregman was the only defender charged with one.
“(We’re) not playing our brand of baseball. It’s been real sloppy on both sides,” said shortstop Trevor Story. “It’s hard to win when you’re not playing well on defense and we’re not stringing at-bats together.”
It was the kind of beautiful, balmy night when the ball can soar out of the ballpark, as evidenced by the Rays’ season-high 16 runs and 15-run margin of victory, which tied the franchise record. Yet even in a ballpark with identical dimensions to Yankee Stadium, a place where many Boston batters hit well, their lone run was a solo homer by rookie Kristian Campbell, who continues to be a bright spot in a rapidly darkening frieze.
“It seems like there was a team that was prepared for the other one, the other one wasn’t prepared for them,” said Cora. “That wasn’t a good night for us, and I’ll take the blame, because it seemed like our team wasn’t ready.”
Throughout this stretch, the Red Sox have almost become formulaic. The cadence of their at-bats is predictable. It’s all but guaranteed they’ll go quickly and quietly. By the end of their side of the fifth inning, they’d struck out 10 times. They finished the night with six hits and 14 strikeouts.
The Red Sox have lost six of their last eight.
“The defense has been bad, the offense has been bad, and we’ve been inconsistent pitching-wise,” Cora said. “Those are the three pillars of baseball, and we haven’t been good.”
The Red Sox are supposed to be better than this. The front office finally spent money to field a better team than this. The players on this roster have shown that they can be so much better than this.
So what gives?
And what, if anything, fixes this team?
“We have to play better, we know that,” Cora said. “For us to be where we want to be, we have to be consistent in the things that we do. And honestly, we’ve been consistently bad the last 10 days.”
Injury updates
Lucas Giolito (hamstring) will make his third rehab start for Triple-A Worcester on Tuesday, followed by Brayan Bello (shoulder) on Wednesday. Bello is ahead of Giolito, Cora said on Monday afternoon. Giolito is likely going to need at least one more rehab outing before being activated.
Reliever Liam Hendriks is also slated to make one more rehab appearance. The plan is for him to be activated during the upcoming homestand with the Chicago White Sox this weekend.
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