They say time heals all wounds, but the Red Sox hardly had any time to get over Friday’s heartbreaking walk-off loss to the Tampa Bay Rays by the time Raimel Tapia hit a sacrifice fly to walk it off for the Toronto Blue Jays against Boston in the 10th inning on Tuesday night at Rogers Centre.
The Red Sox used a four-run eighth inning to take a 5-2 lead over the Blue Jays before Toronto battled back to force extras. George Springer hit his fourth home run of the season, a two-run shot with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to tie the game 5-5. In the end, it was a 6-5 decision in favor of Toronto.
Boston has been on the wrong side of a walk-off in two of its last four games, all of which have been losses. In one of the nine-inning letdowns, Bo Bichette launched a grand slam in the eighth inning to lead Toronto soaring past Boston in the series opener Monday night.
Bench coach Will Venable, serving as acting manager as Alex Cora continues to recover from COVID-19, explained the Red Sox will not dwell on their recent unfortunate stretch and will look to right the ship as soon as possible.
“We put everything into every night, and we’re fighting,” Venable told reporters, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “We know that we have tomorrow, and we’ll turn the page and look at the stuff that we did well tonight, and make the adjustments on stuff that we didn’t do well and be ready to go tomorrow.”
Nick Pivetta, who improved upon a rough start to the season in his fourth appearance, echoed the sentiment.
“Honestly, I think we just move on to tomorrow,” Pivetta told reporters, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “It’s still early in the season. There’s still a lot of baseball to play. These moments don’t define us at all. It’s what we do tomorrow, come back, come strong, have that confidence that we always have, that swagger that we have as a team, just have fun playing baseball.”
Here are more notes from Tuesday’s Red Sox-Blue Jays game:
— Kevin Gausman, who tormented the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Thursday, was back for more on Tuesday night. Gausman scattered four hits with one run — though it was unearned — fanning nine across six innings of work.
— Rafael Devers did not start Tuesday as he had his first off day of the season. Christian Arroyo slotted into this spot at third base, but Devers came into the game in the top of the eighth inning and ended up reaching on a single before scoring what at the time was the tying run.
— Christian Vázquez caught someone stealing for the fourth time this season, which is the most in the American League and tied for the most in MLB, according to Red Sox senior manager of media relations and baseball information J.P. Long.
— The Red Sox continue the series against the Blue Jays on Wednesday at 7:07 p.m. ET. You can watch the game as well as pregame and postgame coverage live on NESN.
