For a moment Tuesday night, it looked as though the Red Sox were going to pull off an impressive comeback victory.
But in what was a microcosm of Boston’s season, the club let a golden opportunity slip through its fingers in frustrating fashion.
With the Red Sox trailing the Philadelphia Phillies 3-2 in the bottom of the ninth at Fenway Park, Xander Bogaerts led off the frame with a ringing double to the left-center field gap. Bogaerts was not long for scoring position, however, as he tried to advance to third base on a J.D. Martinez ground ball to shortstop. Jean Segura wiped Bogaerts off the base path with ease, and the Phillies completed a Game 1 win on the next batter when Andrew Benintendi lined into a double play.
Bogaerts’ base-running decision, quite frankly, was baffling, as it’s a cardinal rule not to run on a ground ball in front of you. After the game, the Red Sox shortstop explained where his head was at.
“Probably not the best way to think,” Bogaerts said, per MassLive. “But based on the way the game was going, I felt like we were on second base a lot. And we kind of got stranded the whole game. It’s just a risk that I took to try to get to third because obviously you know it’s a good pitcher. That was a mistake. Obviously wasn’t the right decision.”
It’s easy to understand why Bogaerts was growing frustrated. The Red Sox in both the fifth and sixth innings had a runner on second base with no outs and failed to score. That said, Boston doesn’t have much room for error at this stage in the season and pushing the envelope in that situation was by no means necessary. To make matters worse, the Tampa Bay Rays fell to the Seattle Mariners on Tuesday, meaning the Red Sox could have trimmed their wild-card deficit to five games had they claimed their sixth consecutive win.
Boston will try to start a new win streak Wednesday night when it wraps up its quick two-game set with Philadelphia.
