The Red Sox might be destined for last place after all.

Boston lost the last 3 games of a 4-game series against the Tampa Bay Rays, including the series finale last night. The Rays won 4-2. For the third consecutive game, the Red Sox only managed to put up 2 runs.

Without David Ortiz’s 1st inning home run (the 502nd of his career), the Red Sox probably wouldn’t have scored at all. It was an opposite field job, and it scored Mookie Betts, who’d singled, to give Big Papi his 100th and 101st RBIs on the season.

Boston had absolutely nothing doing for the rest of the game. Erasmo Ramirez was pretty much unhittable from the 2nd inning on, as the Red Sox went down in order in the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 7th innings. The 4th inning was also technically a 1-2-3 affair, but only because Ortiz’s single was erased when Travis Shaw grounded into a double play.

Wade Miley was sitting pretty with that 2-0 lead for a long while. He got out of a first and third jam in the 2nd and stranded Evan Longoria at second base in the 4th after a leadoff double. That double was just barely left of the bleachers, missing home run distance by feet. Unfortunately for Miley, Longoria hit it to the same spot in his next at-bat. Only, way higher and farther.

With two outs in the 6th inning, Miley gave up an absolute bomb to Longoria.

Miley tried to shrug it off (I mean that literally – I’m pretty sure I saw him shrug at Ryan Hanigan), but it all unraveled after that. Logan Forsythe singled and scored to tie the game on a long double off the right edge of the Monster by Asdrubal Cabrera. Steven Souza, Jr. also used the Monster to double in Cabrera and give the Rays a 3-2 lead. All of this came with two outs, by the way. Hanigan caught Souza trying to advance on a pitch in the dirt to end the inning.

The Red Sox responded with a two-out infield single by Dustin Pedroia and nothing else.

Kevin Kiermaier hit a solo home run over the right field porch on a decent pitch by Miley to start off the 7th inning and add a run to the Tampa lead. After light-hitting catcher Luke Maile doubled with 1 out, Lovullo replaced Miley with Heath Hembree, who got out of the inning.

Miley pitched fine, giving up 4 earned runs over 6.1 innings. Actually, a more accurate way to put it is that he pitched really well, and then suddenly he was the most hittable guy on the planet, giving up 4 earned runs and 5 extra-base hits while only getting one more out off a Tampa bat. That, mixed with a slumping offense, is not a recipe for success.

Xander Bogaerts drew the only Boston walk of the night in the 9th inning, ending his 12-game hitting streak. In fact, closer Brad Boxberger threw six consecutive balls to walk Bogaerts and give Ortiz a 3-0 count before settling down to throw a strike and induce a game-ending double play. 4-2, final.

Notes:

1. Blake Swihart, who pinch-hit for Hanigan in the 8th, threw down to catch Kiermaier stealing. Xander made a really nice catch to put the tag on the runner.

2. Mike Hazen is your new Red Sox General Manager. Congrats, Mike! This always ends well.

It was a tale of two halves for Henry Owens last night. If baseball games had halves. Which they don’t. But still!

Owens’ first four innings were perfect. Seriously, look:

PITCHERS	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	ERA
Owens	4.0	0	0	0	0	4	0	3.97

But if there’s one thing I know about Henry Owens, it’s that he has a tendency to get rattled when things aren’t perfect.

Logan Forsythe smashed the first pitch of the fifth inning into the left-center gap to break up Owens’ perfect stretch, and the Rays did what they had to in order to get the run across: a sacrifice bunt and a sacrifice fly did the trick. Suddenly, the 2-run Boston lead (provided by Travis Shaw on a 1st inning bases-loaded single) was down to 1.

Things got worse for Owens in the 6th. He walked Richie Shaffer on five pitches, and on the next three consecutive pitches, he got Luke Maile to pop out, hit Guyer on a wild inside pitch, and gave up a single to Mikie Mahtook. Bases loaded, one out.

The next batter, Evan Longoria, lifted a fly ball to right field, and Mookie Betts should probably have just eaten the ball. Instead, he absolutely airmailed a throw to home plate. Owens, backing up the throw, not only missed the ball (letting it get into the stands to score another runner) but looked pretty awkward in the process. A real lose-lose. 3-2, Tampa.

Owens had another tough inning in the 7th, but got out of it without giving up any runs despite loading the bases with no outs. After Shaw botched an attempt to field a soft ground ball to first (it went down as an infield single) to load the bases following a single and a walk, he redeemed himself by firing home to get the inning’s first out on a soft ground ball from Shaffer. Three pitches later, Owens managed to get the ball home on another soft grounder to start a 1-2-3 double play to end the inning.

Owens was looking pretty shaky at this point – might it have been time to remove him from the game? Possibly, but Torey Lovullo disagreed. On the one hand, the Sox were only down one and Owens had either lost his best stuff or was rattled. On the other, Boston is essentially playing for the love of the game at this point, and this game represented a good opportunity to let Owens pitch deep. Plus, he’d only thrown 76 pitches through 7! I think if this team was in the midst of a serious playoff push, Lovullo might’ve deferred to the bullpen, but as it is, I can’t really blame him.

For the record, though, it went poorly. Double, home run, 5-2. Owens’ line after the 4th inning doesn’t look quite as pretty:

PITCHERS	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	ERA
Owens	3.1	7	5	4	2	1	1	4.41

Now down 3 runs, the Boston offense did manage to put runners on base in both the 8th and 9th innings. But Xander Bogaerts tried and failed (by a split second) to stretch a Green Monster single into a double in the 8th, and Shaw’s leadoff walk in the 9th amounted to approximately nothing. 5-2, final.

Notes:

Bogaerts went 2-3, walked, and scored a run, but his failed 8th inning stretch was the second of two baserunning mistakes. In the 3rd, when the Sox still had a 2-0 lead, Bogaerts led off with a double. But he completely misread a David Ortiz broken bat bloop, pretty much running on contact. Maybe he didn’t know a ball could fly that far off a broken bat. Whatever the reason, he was doubled off easily.