“We’re certainly looking to stabilize the rotation down the stretch here where we’re playing important games, we want to give every opportunity to win as many of those as possible, and we think that Payton (Tolle) and Dustin (May) give us the best chance to do that right now,” said Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, after the club released veteran righty Walker Buehler on Friday.
Neither stability nor victory were the theme of the following afternoon’s game. The Pirates took the series with a 10-3 win.
Dustin May yielded seven runs (six earned) on eight hits in 5.1 innings. He walked four, struck out five, and hit a batter.
Twice within the first five innings, May loaded the bases and allowed at least one run to score before recording an out. His only clean inning was the second, when he struck out the side. Oneil Cruz led off the sixth with a home run that barreled 426 feet to center at 114.2 mph. It was the beginning of a 10-batter inning in which the Pirates tacked on five runs.
The Boston bats, meanwhile, could not muster much against Pirates starter Johan Oviedo, who yielded two earned runs on three hits, walked three and struck out six. During his five innings they were 1 for 5 with runners in scoring position and left three men on base.
Trevor Story led off the second with a first-pitch double, and Masataka Yoshida followed with a walk. They moved no further, as Oviedo retired the next three batters.
Carlos Narváez tied the game in the third, with a leadoff homer to the second row of seats atop the Green Monster. The Red Sox again went in order after.
Boston took the lead in the fourth on a leadoff walk by Story, who promptly extended his perfect stolen-base record to 24. He came home to score the go-ahead run on a Romy Gonzalez one-out RBI single.
In the fifth, Oviedo became the second pitcher to strike out Roman Anthony three or more times.
With a 9-2 lead, the Pirates felt comfortable going to their bullpen for the bottom of the sixth. Mike Burrows gave up three straight one-out singles to Story, Yoshida, and Gonzalez, who brought Story home for the third Red Sox run.
Burrows loaded the bases, then struck out Narváez looking to leave the diamond full.
The seventh inning began with promise. Anthony led off with a single, and Jarren Duran joined him with a one-out single. For the third time in six innings, the Red Sox left multiple men on base. Reynolds barely managed to grasp Yoshida’s inning-ending lineout, so much so that the Red Sox’ run-scoring music began emanating from Fenway’s speakers before someone pulled the plug.
The game felt over long before Horwitz caught Alex Bregman’s sky-high pop-up to officially brought the contest to an end.
All told, the Red Sox went 2 for 10 with runners in scoring position. Both teams left eight men on base.
Battered bullpen
For the second game in a row, the bullpen allowed a Sox starter’s base runners to score. Brennan Bernardino allowed both of May’s base runners to score on a Spencer Horwitz two-run single, then loaded the bases on back-to-back walks to Bryan Reynolds and Tommy Pham.
Between May and Bernardino, 10 Pirates came to bat in the sixth. Five runs scored.
Greg Weissert and Steven Matz set the Pirates down in order in the seventh and eighth, respectively, but Jordan Hicks struggled once again. Hicks began the ninth with an Andrew McCutchen single and Nick Gonzalez double. When one of Hicks’ pitches to Cruz careened past Narváez, both runners attempted to score. The crew chief awarded one run on what was ruled a wild pitch.
Facts and figures
The Red Sox are 23-42 when opponents score first, and 6-43 when trailing after six innings.
With a paid attendance of 36,391, Saturday marked Fenway’s 18th consecutive sell-out.
But by the time the Red Sox came to bat in the bottom of the ninth, more seats appeared empty than occupied.
