Red Sox Notes: Defensive Blunders Set Boston Further Back In Wild-Card Race

BOSTON — The Red Sox are in the middle of chasing down the final spot in the American League wild-card race but fell farther back by dropping the middle game to the Astros on Tuesday night at Fenway Park.

It was a night that Boston just couldn’t seem to get anything going and falling behind 2-0 in the first inning to Houston certainly didn’t help the Red Sox’s cause.

Brayan Bello made two mistakes that led to Alex Bregman and Yordan Álvarez’s launching back-to-back home runs. After the first, Bello settled down and gave his team a chance to win.

“We just didn’t make plays behind him,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “… We put ourselves in a bad spot not making plays.”

Rafael Devers committed his 17th error of the season and David Hamilton failed to complete a double play in the fifth inning which allowed the Astros to score a run.

Cora said those two defensive plays defined the game and not in a good way.

“We didn’t make two routine plays,” Cora said. “(Houston) is really good at what they do and they kept putting pressure on.”

Along with the miscues in the field, John Schreiber walked Yainer Díaz with two outs in the sixth before giving up a double to Mauricio Dubón that plated two more runs for the Astros.

“The devil is the devil,” Cora said. “We gotta be more aggressive in the strike zone. I mean, two-out walks are tough to defend.”

Despite falling 6 1/2 games back in the wild-card race, Cora said there’s plenty of baseball left to be played in the season, especially within the division.

“We just gotta play better baseball. We haven’t done that,” Cora said. “We are where we are because we have struggled in certain areas of the game and it’s catching up now.”

Here are more notes from Tuesday’s Red Sox-Astros game:

— Bello is the fourth Boston starter in as many games that has not made it out of the fifth inning for the Red Sox.

“I felt good today,” Bello said via Red Sox translator Carlos Villoria Benitez. “I feel good. Besides the two pitches in the first inning, I felt good. My body felt good. My arm felt good. I feel like my pitches had good movement.”

The 24-year-old righty dropped to 10-8 on the season with the loss after allowing three runs, two of them earned, on four hits while throwing 62.1% of his pitches for strikes (51-of-82 pitches).

— The Red Sox dropped to below .500 for the month of August at 13-14 and have lost six of their last nine games. They are now 24-46 when their opponents score first and 7-42 when scoring less than four runs in a game.

— Triston Casas drew two walks in the game for his 12th multi-walk game of the season. The first baseman has walked 62 times in the campaign while slashing .258/.363/.484 with 97 hits, 18 doubles, 21 home runs and 53 RBI.

— The Red Sox will close out their series against the Astros on Wednesday afternoon. NESN’s full coverage of the game from Fenway Park begins at 3 p.m. ET.