Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora spent the first two minutes of his postgame press conference following a brutal loss Thursday critiquing his team's offensive approach while praising the Toronto Blue Jay's offense.
But then Cora stopped himself, possibly thinking he was carrying on too much about the offensive struggles of Red Sox before in a self-deprecating manner noting how he wasn't exactly the greatest hitter at the plate.
"They make pitches but at the same time, you can't expand," Cora told reporters, as seen on NESN postgame coverage. "It's not easy. I hit .230 in the big leagues. I was a horrible hitter. But I think we're better than that."
While the Red Sox scored more than four runs for the first time in the five games, the offense failed to deliver in two monumental situations in the eighth and ninth frames and ultimately fell to the Blue Jays, 6-5, in 10 innings at Fenway Park.
With the game tied, Reese McGuire tripled to begin the bottom of the eighth, but the Red Sox couldn't push the go-ahead run across the plate. It then seemed impossible Boston wouldn't score in the bottom of the ninth when it loaded the bases with no outs against Blue Jays closer Jordan Romano.
The Red Sox made it possible, though, with Franchy Cordero striking out swinging before Kiké Hernández grounded to Matt Chapman, who displayed tremendous awareness by stepping on third and throwing to first for a demoralizing inning-ending double play.
It seemed like a perfect situation for the Red Sox to score and celebrate a victory -- Boston actually had an 87% chance of scoring, per The Boston Globe's Pete Abraham -- but neither ended up happening.
After Cora's quick moment of trying to bring some levity to a tough situation, he went back to the tone he started with.
"You got to take your walks, too, in those situations," Cora told reporters. "They're not going to give in. There's certain situations, like (George) Springer walked three times today and he had men in scoring position and just pass the baton. That's the difference right now between us and other teams.
"Like I said yesterday, we talk about defense and pitching, but offensively it's been going on for a while. We haven't been good for a while. We're supposed to hit. It hasn't happened."
