Red Sox score 8 runs for late rally but come up short in loss to Reds

BOSTON — For much of the nine-game road trip out west, the Red Sox offense staggered, finding its footing on a few occasions but largely underperforming.

Manager Alex Cora acknowledged as much ahead of Tuesday’s game as the team returned home for a three-game series against the Cincinnati Reds.

“Our offense the last few weeks has been blah, for lack of a better word,” Cora said. “But we’re going to hit it.”

Through six innings against the Reds, the Red Sox continued to resemble zombies at the plate. They’d managed just one hit off starter Ben Lively over the first four innings and appeared destined for a shutout.

But their manager’s prescient pregame remarks rang true. The Red Sox lineup has proved time and again this season that it can flip a switch and ignite a rally in an instant and did just that beginning in the seventh inning, but it was too little, too late this time.

With a three-run seventh and a five-run ninth, the Red Sox turned an 8-0 deficit in the seventh into a 9-8 game by the ninth. Yet with the tying run on third and the Red Sox ferociously racking up runs, Triston Casas struck out to end the game, preserving the 9-8 win for Cincinnati.

“We were short to the ball and hit line drives,” Cora said of the five-run ninth inning. “We weren’t trying to do too much. I think we’re getting caught up sometimes in hitting the ball in the air. I think that inning was a very simple approach. We put the ball in play and good things happen. Hopefully, we can take that going into tomorrow and keep gaining momentum offensively.”

Back home. 😊 pic.twitter.com/Si6gDL0flw

— Red Sox (@RedSox) May 30, 2023

The Red Sox entered Tuesday with the best home average in baseball (.296) and the second-best OPS at home (.845). The surprise wasn’t so much that they poured on the runs so quickly — their five-run ninth marked more runs than they’d scored in the previous two games combined — but that it took so long for them to find a rhythm against the Reds.

“We started making adjustments a little bit too late, and the game got fast on us,” Rafael Devers said through interpreter Carlos Villoria-Benítez.

The offense had its issues early, but so too did Red Sox starter Brayan Bello. Bello struggled to find his command, needing 33 pitches, just 18 of which were strikes, in the first inning. He labored again through the second inning, with his pitch count rising to 59, and it had inflated to 77 by the third. He might have gotten out of the inning sooner if not for a Kiké Hernandez error at shortstop. Bello allowed a leadoff triple in the fourth but managed to strand the runner by getting a groundout and then consecutive strikeouts, but by then he’d thrown 97 pitches and his day was done. Bello exited with one run allowed on five hits and two walks while striking out four in four innings. That he allowed only one run amid the struggles gave the Red Sox a chance, but his early exit put a burden on the bullpen.

“One of the things I noticed in the first inning was my mechanics were slow, and so that was part of the command issues,” Bello said through Villoria-Benítez. “That’s something I tried to fix in the third and the fourth, but it was already too late and I had too many pitches in the first inning.”

Justin Garza relieved Bello and allowed two more runs, just one earned thanks to another Hernandez error. Hernandez had just one error in his previous 20 games at shortstop, but given the late rally, the run was costly.

Joely Rodriguez finished off the sixth but then allowed five runs in the seventh, including a grand slam from Jose Barrero, giving the Reds an 8-0 lead before the Red Sox started to chip away in the bottom of the seventh.

An Enmanuel Valdez infield single broke the dam on the Red Sox offense in the seventh. Reese McGuire followed with a double, Raimel Tapia tripled and Devers singled as the Red Sox scored three runs.

The Reds tacked on a run in the eighth with a triple and sacrifice fly. Masataka Yoshida, who had a three-hit night, led off the eighth with a single. But with one out, Casas hit a fly out to right and Yoshida was doubled off after he forgot the number of outs.

Still, the Red Sox surged again in the ninth with another key contribution from Valdez, this time a one-out walk. McGuire hit another double and Tapia, Devers and Justin Turner followed with singles before the Reds had to turn to their closer Alexis Diaz. Diaz surrendered a Yoshida double to make it a 9-7 game. Jarren Duran’s groundout brought them within one run, but Casas struck out to squash the rally.

(Photo of Masataka Yoshida: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)