Red Sox waste stellar outing by Garrett Crochet in extra-inning loss to Angels

Boston Globe

5 days ago

Aroldis Chapman recorded a scoreless bottom of the ninth.
But because these Red Sox have virtually no margin for error, they lost anyway. Christian Moore, a Suffield Academy grad in his first month in the majors, tagged righthander Greg Weissert for a tying home run in the eighth and lefthander Justin Wilson for a walkoff two-run shot in the 10th.
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Despite great success in one aspect of the game for most of the night, a little went wrong and the Red Sox couldn't recover. It was their fourth consecutive loss.
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That dropped the Red Sox to 40-41, entrenched in the mediocre range. They have had a .500 record 15 times. And they are six games behind the first-place Yankees in the AL East, 2½ games back of an AL wild-card spot.
'We've been an average team,' manager Alex Cora said before the game. 'I still believe we can be better in certain areas, more consistent.'
Because of the major personnel changes the Red Sox have endured, Cora said, the team's identity has been slower to form than it would be most other years.
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What can or should that identity be?
Trevor Story and Rob Refsnyder, respected veterans, touched on similar themes: a club that should take advantage of its youth, athleticism, and talent.
Those tend to be accompanied, though, by mistakes, inconsistency, and feelings of pressure to perform. Such is the nature of inexperience.
'Sometimes it's tough to have an identity with the versatility, but maybe that's what it is,' Story said. 'Be versatile, find different ways to win, doing it by slugging, by bunting. I feel like when we played our best, it's clean baseball, playing good defense, running the bases well, not really making mistakes, not giving them more opportunities or more things like that. We can be a little more consistent in that area.'
Refsnyder said: 'The identity is a very young team, but we have to play aggressive, we have to play fast, hopefully smart. That's doing your homework before the game, at night preparing for the next game. So I think the identity is a young and fast, athletic team. We're going to mix and match a lot, we're going to pinch hit a lot, we're going to do a bunch of defensive substitutions.'
A key, in Refsnyder's view, is not to 'shy away from those mistakes.' They happen. They are how the newbies learn. They might even be better than the alternative.
'Sometimes when you try not to make mistakes or you're nervous and you're not applying as aggressively or fast as you maybe would in Triple A when the lights aren't as bright, that's just not a recipe for winning baseball,' he said. 'I'm not saying we're doing that, but I used to do that when I was younger. I would prepare but then be playing a little timid. You ultimately just don't play your best baseball.
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'Over the course of a season, if you play aggressive and smart and let your talent take over at times, ultimately you're going to play better than if you play safe and scared.'
Because the Red Sox are missing the hitters who represented the meat of their lineup at the start of the season — Alex Bregman (injured for at least a couple more weeks), Rafael Devers (traded), Triston Casas (injured and out for the year) — their starting nine of late has featured near-daily changes and few sure things. Even Jarren Duran, an All-Star in 2024, bounces between leadoff and dropping to fifth depending on which way the opposing starting pitcher throws the ball.
On Tuesday, for example, the Sox' batting order included three rookies, a second-year full-timer, a couple of journeymen, and Story, Refsnyder, and Duran. That Duran — with about three years of service time in the majors — is a pseudo-veteran speaks to how young the group is.
Some of that will change in the coming weeks. Bregman is due to return in the first half of July. Masataka Yoshida is on pace to beat him back. They figure to be reliable bats and bring the lineup more day-to-day regularity.
'It's a different lineup when those two guys are in it, honestly,' Refsnyder said.
Cora said: 'When they're ready, they're going to help us. Right now, this is who we are.'
Tim Healey can be reached at