It’s been one rough week for the Red Sox. And the timing couldn’t be worse.
Boston has lost six games in the last seven days, and the Sox currently find themselves amidst a five-game losing streak thanks to a miserable 8-0 loss Wednesday to the Toronto Blue Jays. The Sox collected just two hits in Game 2 of a three-game set in which Boston’s bats went silent.
The Sox’s offense has been pretty dismal in general lately, and manager Alex Cora knows it.
“We’re not controlling the strike zone right now,” Cora said, as seen on NESN postgame coverage. “You know, today was fastball up, breaking balls down. We didn’t make adjustments. We didn’t get on top of the fastball. We swung and missed at the breaking ball. It was an easy game for the (Blue Jays) pitching staff.”
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some sort of passion behind Boston’s recent play.
“The effort is there, but the results are not,” Cora said. “Obviously, everybody is disappointed at what’s going on, you know? It hasn’t been good the last 10 days, offensively.”
There is no wiggle room left for the Sox, who now are 9.5 games back in the American League wild card race. So with just 16 games left in the season and a hefty hill to climb in the wild card race, there’s only one thing Cora has to say to his team.
“Just play good baseball.”
Here are some more notes from Wednesday’s Red Sox-Blue Jays game:
— And just like that, the Red Sox’s extra-base hit streak is over.
Prior to Wednesday’s loss, the Sox had recorded an extra-base hit in 159-straight games, good for the 4th longest streak of its kind in Major League Baseball history. But thanks to Boston’s two-single evening, that streak was snapped.
— It’s not very often we see the Jays shut out the Sox.
Toronto shut out Boston for just the 26th time in 652 games against the Sox. It’s the first time the Blue Jays have done so since April 19, 2017.
— Boston is now just 27-41 when opponents score first this season.
— If there was one tiny bright spot for Boston’s pitching staff, it was Bobby Poyner.
Wednesday was just the 17th game the southpaw has started since his freshman year of college in 2013, and he put together some impressive stuff during his brief outing. Poyner held Toronto both hitless and scoreless through two innings of work.
