The 2018 Red Sox lost Alex Cora’s first career game as a manager.
The 2025 Red Sox lost his 999th at Fenway Park on Thursday afternoon, falling to the Seattle Mariners 4-3 to drop the series.
It was a career day for Red Sox starter Garrett Crochet, though not in ways he’d like. The lefthander needed 110 pitches, a new high, to get through five innings, and he issued five walks for the first time ever.
Crochet’s command was off from the get-go, and he became the fifth consecutive Sox starter to give up at least one run in the first inning. Dylan Moore, the American League Player of the Week, led off with a single, advanced on a balk, and he and Randy Arozarena, who’d drawn his first of three walks, scored on Mitch Garver’s RBI-double.
Another two runs in the second proved all the Mariners needed, but the Red Sox pitching staff did everything they could to keep their team in the game. After a 1-2-3 third, they had at least one baserunner in every inning until Luis Guerrero set them down in order in the eighth and ninth. Crochet stranded two runners apiece in the fourth and fifth, getting a swinging strikeout to end each frame. Greg Weissert, too, worked around a pair of baserunners in the sixth, and Liam Hendriks got a bases-loaded strikeout to finish the seventh. The Mariners collected nine hits and eight walks, but went 3 for 13 with runners in scoring position and left 12 men on base.
Of the Red Sox’s 27 games this season, 17 have been decided by no more than three runs, including 10 of their last 15. Several losses can be at least partially attributed to their struggle to hit with men on base – they entered Thursday with 196 runners left, the most in the AL and tied for second in MLB – but this time, they barely had any runners to strand. Boston collected four hits and two walks in the contest, and struck out 12 times.
With the exception of Alex Bregman, who complemented a strong defensive showing with a solo homer, RBI single, and walk in three at-bats against him, Mariners right-hander Bryan Woo utterly befuddled the Boston batters. The Red Sox, who entered the contest leading the American League in home batting average and on-base percentage, and second in OPS and runs scored, only managed one other hit off the Seattle starter: Jarren Duran’s leadoff double in the third. The only other baserunner against Woo was Triston Casas, whom he hit with a pitch in the second.
It was more of the same against Collin Snider, who breezed through a 1-2-3 seventh.
Carlos Narváez’s solo homer to lead off the eighth was Boston’s first hit since the third inning, and their last of the contest. His homer off Gabe Speier clanged off the Pesky Pole and brought the Red Sox within one, but it couldn’t rewrite a game that seemed written in stone since the start.
After Narváez’s homer, his teammates went down in order. And in the ninth, Triston Casas drew a two-out walk, only to watch Kristian Campbell strike out to complete a golden sombrero and cement the loss.
The Red Sox are 14-13 on the season, including 4-5 in one-run games. They’re 4-4 in series play, including 2-2 at home.
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