Troubling Trend Rears Head In Walk-Off Loss To Brewers

The Boston Red Sox left no room for error Tuesday night against the Milwaukee Brewers.

They needed all the extra wiggle room, too.

So while Aroldis Chapman blew a save opportunity in the bottom of the ninth inning and Liam Hendriks surrendered a walk-off grand slam to Christian Yelich an inning later, it was Boston’s continued offensive struggles that really plagued it in a 5-1 loss to the Brewers in 10 innings at American Family Field.

The Red Sox pushed their only run across on a heads-up running play by Ceddanne Rafaela when he scored on a wild pitch in the sixth inning. Other than that, it was a bunch of goose eggs for Boston’s offense as the Red Sox have scored a mere five runs across their four-game losing streak.

“You look at the scores, we got to hit. At one point, we got to hit,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters, per NESN. “But they’re good baseball games. Today was good. The ones against Baltimore, too. You go back to the Mets (series). That’s the way I see it. That’s my job, right? Try to keep positive.

“We know where we’re at. We’re not winning games, but are we playing bad baseball? I don’t know, man. That’s for others to tell us. But I think we’re doing some good things. We need to be better in others. I think offensively we have to pick it up.”

The losing streak for the Red Sox coincides with Alex Bregman hitting the injured list. Boston is batting just .213 over the last four games with 32 strikeouts while going 3-for-30 with runners in scoring position and 33 runners left on base.

The Red Sox had their chances to put runs on the scoreboard Tuesday, but yet again couldn’t capitalize when runners got on. The Red Sox left eight runners on base and went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position. The biggest culprit of that was Trevor Story, who went 0-for-3 in such situations.

“We got to be better,” Cora said. “The margin for error — it is hard to win games 1-0. We didn’t do a good job with that.”

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

— The Red Sox opted to not give Richard Fitts a second rehab outing and instead put him back on a big-league mound for the first time since April 12. The 25-year-old righthander, who was on the injured list due to a right pectoral strain, could only give the Red Sox three innings as his pitch count wasn’t built up yet. He was effective, allowing no runs and two hits while walking one and striking out two.

— Fitts’ short outing meant plenty of work for the Red Sox bullpen and they were tremendous until Chapman and Hendriks. Brennan Bernardino, Greg Weissert, Justin Wilson and Justin Slaten combined to pitch five scoreless innings in which they allowed just one hit. It was the first blown save of Chapman’s season, but it sure came at a bad time for the Red Sox.

“We pitched extremely well,” Cora said. “Even Chapman. … They put some good at-bats later on. They do the little things. They move guys over, they run the bases extremely weak. Just a tough one.”

— Marcelo Mayer was the only Red Sox batter to collect two hits. The 22-year-old infielder is batting .333 just four games into his big-league career. Mayer did run into an out on the basepaths when he tried to tag up on a fly ball to go from second to third in the fifth inning.

— The Red Sox have six walk-off losses on the season, which is tied for the major-league lead.

— The Red Sox wrap up their three-game set with the Brewers with a matinee affair Wednesday. First pitch from American Family Field is scheduled for 1:10 p.m. ET. Brayan Bello and Freddy Peralta will get the starts on the mound for Boston and Milwaukee, respectively. You can catch complete coverage of the game on NESN.