The series sweep to the Yankees has now bled into a 4th game. The Sox have officially hit the skids, folks. I really thought they had a chance to get over the hump tonight, I won’t lie. The Rays are a light-hitting bunch, and I’ll admit that I still get a flutter of hope whenever I see that Clay Buchholz is pitching, because I know how good his stuff can be. And who knows how things would have gone for him if James Loney’s first at-bat of the night had gone differently? But on a fly ball down the left field line, Hanley Ramirez collided with the wall and pulled a Patrick Pass, dropping the ball upon injuring his shoulder.

Longoria knocked him in, and was himself knocked in by the following batter, David DeJesus. By the time Buchholz got Logan Forsythe to fly out to Ramirez’s replacement, Allen Craig, what might’ve been a 1-2-3 first inning had become yet another early deficit for Boston. In the bottom half of the inning, Craig, in Ramirez’s scheduled cleanup spot, grounded to short with Pedroia on 2nd to end the inning.

In the 2nd, Clay got a little too cocky dealing with Joey Butler, a 29-year-old career .294 hitter in the minors, trying to sneak an 0-1 changeup over the inside half of the plate and getting taken deep to left field.

Asdrubal Cabrera had singled to lead off, so the home run made it 4-0, Rays.

In the bottom of the 2nd, Brock Holt and Xander Bogaerts gave the Red Sox a spark with a pair of back-to-back two-out triples to right field, where Steven Souza, Jr. had an adventure of a night (yeah, I know Lyons said it during the broadcast, but I thought it first – how does the intellectual property work for that?). He’d already dropped a “double” by Pedroia in the 1st, and both triples could have been handled better, especially Bogaerts’, which almost turned into an inside-the-park job. Souza completely whiffed on it as it bounced by him and towards the wall. Fortunately for Souza, Bogaerts was stranded at third.

The remainder of Buchholz’s night was made up of innings both long (escaping a bases-loaded jam in the 3rd) and short (striking out the side in the 6th), but all of them scoreless until the 7th inning, when an uncharacteristically wild outing from Junichi Tazawa included Souza, Jr. scoring on another DeJesus RBI single to pin another earned run to Buchholz’s box score.

On the offensive side, the Red Sox had 7 runners reach scoring position. But only one, Brock Holt after his 2nd inning triple, managed to actually score. Going into the game, Boston was 23rd in MLB in batting average with runners in scoring position (.228), and that number has certainly sunk even lower after tonight’s performance. Worse, two of these runners were on second base with no outs. The bats, when they’re bad, are anemic. It’s getting hard to watch Mike Napoli, last night’s home run notwithstanding. Sandoval gets himself into so many 0-2 counts. Allen Craig is an absolute disaster at the plate, and I was plain shocked when he managed a single in the 6th. His at-bats in the 3rd and 8th, both swinging strikeouts, are much more emblematic of his season so far.

So Boston’s in last place, and New York’s in first. What a fun great time this is. And now it’s Tuesday.

Notes:

• Following on from Don’s bragging during a recent game about the NESN window being closed for cold weather so far this spring, the window was open for, apparently, “the first time since Opening Day.”
• Don’s favorite food to cook is lobster. You’re welcome.