‘WORST LOSS OF THE YEAR’
The Red Sox were wrapping up a West Coast swing in Denver, rolling toward victory with a 6-3 lead in the sixth, in such control Will Flemming and Will Middlebrooks on WEEI were comfortable providing a review of their golf outing in Seattle the week before.
With a win, Boston would head home with two series wins in a row and a winning road trip. In a bleak, last-place season, the Red Sox could wing their way to Fenway and a four-game series against the Yankees with a bounce in their steps.
Then the roof caved in at open-air Coors Field but this had nothing to do with the thin air at altitude and everything to do with the Bad News Bears wearing Red Sox unis – that's not an editorial comment from me but a repeated reference from Flemming and Middlebrooks.
With two outs in the seventh, the Red Sox sat on a 90 percent win probability, according to the math geeks who calculate these things at Baseball Savant. Instead, the Rockies scored 5 runs in the next two innings and won 8-6.
Cliff diving
“This team this season invents ways to lose,” Will F. said mid-meltdown.
Then he unleashed a series of mounting invective rich in alarm and disgust, with counterpuntal emphasis from Will M.
“If this game doesn’t epitomize the Red Sox season, I don’t know what does. This has turned into a nightmare,” W.F. said.
“I’m just sick to my stomach the way this season is going,” W.M. said.
When the collapse was final, hindsight showed the inevitable to have been foreordained. This is a narrative not taking shape, but solidifying into stone.
“Ball game over in an epic disaster in Denver. Red Sox lose a series to the worst team in baseball. It is gut-check time for the Red Sox. Worst loss of the year. No doubt about it,” W.F. told his audience.
“You said that two days ago,” Middlebrooks said.
Touché.
In a karmic slap, or slapstick karma, aircraft woes brought a five-hour delay on the tarmac in Denver and a 7 a.m. return to Logan.
How would things spiral from here? New England was fackin’ disgruntled.
They’d been primed.
On June 18 the Red Sox lost 4-3 to the Blue Jays, an in-division rival also suffering through a disappointing season and sporting a losing record then and now. (Ben Shulman and Chris Leroux on CHNL on Saturday, June 27, spent two innings talking to the Maple Leafs first-overall draft pick, Gavin McKenna, out of Penn State and Whitehorse in the Yukon. The announcers, who at least were present to call the home game, seemed more than ready for the baseball season to conclude and the real sport to begin.)
“Every game feels the same. The Red Sox fall behind. They have been atrocious when falling behind by 2 or 3 runs. And they find themselves right there again,” W.F. bemoaned. Or did he bewail back in the middle of June?
Then:
“Disgusting offense from the Red Sox right now. There is no other way to say it.”
And then:
“We’re going to leave this alone at some point, Will, because you can’t say the same thing over and over and over again. But this offense is brutal. And when they fall behind by 2 or 3 runs they lose. Every. Single. Time.”
And furthermore:
“You just have to be honest about it.”
Then, honestly:
“The Red Sox are utterly embarrassing with runners in scoring position in this series,” W.F. said, noting the team’s 1 for 27 performance in such spots during the Toronto series.
Contrary to the thesis, the Red Sox scraped back into the game to tie in the eighth. They of course coughed it up in the ninth.
“You can feel the anger in this ballpark right now,” W.F., said.
Finally, paradoxically.
“I’m at a loss for words of how awful this offense is right now.”
This is the narrative of one team’s season: The Red Sox suck.
The story of the Boston season has shape and substance. It is a bona fide storyline. Garrett Crochet out, hurt. A pitching staff nonetheless exceeding expectations. Undermined and failed by a lineup without punch or luck. A manager fired in a poorly handled out-of-town defenestration. The gang that couldn’t shoot straight, except for directly into its own foot.
A lost season in New England.
Just because, however, a narrative solidifies does not mean it cannot be flipped. Plot twists remain possible.
The series in Colorado did not end with the dispiriting loss on the field. A five-hour on-the-tarmac delay plagued an already challenging travel schedule.
And the Yankees awaited with four slated at Fenway.
Wouldn’t you know it. The Red Sox run contrary to the story their fans have settled on, come up with a different narrative than perhaps even they were telling themselves about 2026.
Boston has promptly taken the first three from New York in tense, well-pitched games with the bats at last supporting the arms early and often. Sunday night the Red Sox go for a four-game sweep, a development as unlikely as it is welcome for the team’s fans. Every plot has an inflection point. Is this it, or a false hope feint? This, too, is the story of a season.
Sweep alert
Hope is never fully absent until elimination math sings.
“Oftentimes the Yankees change things in one way or another,” Will F. said Saturday. “For now this season tries to stay on course.”
“This is the halfway point,” Will M. followed. “You’ve got to do what you can to turn things around.”