BOSTON — Sunday will forever be remembered in Red Sox history as the day David Ortiz was inducted into the Hall of Fame, as the franchise icon officially became baseball royalty in Cooperstown.
A couple hundred miles away in Boston, though, his former team was finishing off a weekend to forget.
In three troubling days at Fenway Park, this Red Sox season – if not already – became concerning, with their short and long-term futures suddenly in limbo as the trade deadline approaches in one week.
On Friday, the Red Sox suffered a historic 23-run loss. On Saturday, they lost their best player to injury. And on Sunday, their woes continued with an ugly 8-4 loss that was borderline unwatchable at times, as the Blue Jays completed a sweep.
The Red Sox have dropped five games in a row, outscored 67-13 in that span. With a 48-48 record, they’re back at .500 for the first time since June 5 as they continue to fall behind in the Wild Card chase.
And they keep beating themselves.
The only consistency it seems the Red Sox have shown throughout the month of July is bad defense. It led to Friday’s embarrassing defeat and continued on Sunday, which had enough clips for a blooper reel.
Sunday’s fifth inning was as bad as it gets. The Red Sox trailed just 5-2 when a series of inexplicable miscues ultimately decided their fate. It started to get away from them as Hirokazu Sawamura issued a leadoff walk to Teoscar Hernandez. Two batters later, Matt Chapman smoked a double before Raimel Tapia’s RBI single.
Then it got ugly.
With Rafael Devers on the injured list, rookie Jeter Downs made his third career start at third base, where he had a tough day and made two mistakes in a row in the inning. Danny Jansen hit a tough grounder to Downs that he fielded cleanly, but as he threw home to get Chapman out at the plate, the ball hit him square in the back, allowing Chapman to score.
The next batter, George Springer, hit a routine grounder to third. But Downs bobbled it, and was too late getting the runner at second base, which loaded the bases.
The miscues seemed to be contagious, and it got even worse. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. came up next and hit a soft tapper to the right side of the mound. Bobby Dalbec rushed from first to grab it, and Sawamura sprinted to cover first. But the pitcher overran the base by a couple of feet as he received the toss from Dalbec. Sawamura desperately tried to get back to the bag, but Guerrero was safe and another run scored.
Xander Bogaerts then took matters into his own hands by turning a double play to end the inning and the madness, but the damage was done.
Jarren Duran tripled and scored in the fifth before Jackie Bradley Jr. hit his second homer in three days in the sixth but the Red Sox couldn’t rally back from that inning.
It certainly didn’t help that the Red Sox spotted the Blue Jays a 5-0 lead in the first, which included some tough luck for rookie Brayan Bello. Toronto reached on two weak hits to start the game, one on a slow grounder that Bogaerts couldn’t pick up with his bare hand, then a double from Guerrero that bounced off the third base bag.
Bello also issued two walks in the inning and he couldn’t escape the trouble. Tapia – who hit the inside-the-park grand slam on Friday – came up with the bases loaded again and smoked the first pitch he saw to the right-field gap that cleared the bases.
