BOSTON — Time is ticking, and the Red Sox are still in need of a first baseman.
Nearly four months into the season, the Red Sox are still without a major league caliber first baseman that can provide consistent offense or defense. On Wednesday, it cost them again.
The Franchy Cordero experiment hit another low at Fenway Park, where he made a trio of errors – including two in one play – that haunted the Red Sox in a frustrating loss to the Cleveland Guardians. Bobby Dalbec, playing third base for Rafael Devers hit two homers and drove in five runs but it was not enough as the Red Sox fell, 7-6.
The loss dropped the Red Sox to 49-50, the first time they’ve been under .500 since June 4.
Cordero’s two-in-one miscue in the second inning helped kickstart a three-run inning for the Guardians. With runners on second and third and no outs, Nolan Jones hit a grounder to first that hopped high on Cordero, who tried to glove it on the run to his right, but it bounced off his glove for the first error. Then, with the ball rolling away, he grabbed it and tried making an off-balanced throw to first with his body fading away from the bag. But it was expectedly not on target and rolled away.
1-0, Guardians.
Cleveland plated two more in the inning before Dalbec began his big night with a two-run homer that cleared everything in left field to make it a one-run game.
But two innings later, Cleveland got those runs back, in part because Cordero couldn’t handle a tough liner down the right field line. With runners on first and third and one out, Steven Kwan ripped a double off Nathan Eovaldi and skirted past Cordero – who looked like he could have at least knocked it down to stay in the infield – lunging the wrong way. It wasn’t an error but a run scored as Cleveland took a 5-2 lead in the frame.
Cordero made up some for his miscues by reaching base three times on Wednesday, including a double in the fourth that scored Christian Vazquez, who questionably blew through a stop sign at third to go home. Luckily for him, Kwan’s throw from left was off as the Guardians were charged for two errors on the play, which allowed Cordero to get to third. A batter later, Dalbec’s sac fly scored Cordero to make it a one-run game again.
After Eovaldi finished another spotty outing strong with two shutout innings in the fifth and sixth, Dalbec blasted his second homer of the night, a two-run shot that barely cleared the center-field wall. It was his first multi-homer game of the season and gave the Red Sox a 6-5 lead.
But it was short lived. After John Schreiber pitched a shutout seventh, the eighth got off to an inauspicious start when Cordero completed his hat trick of errors. Jones began the inning with a slow grounder to the first base side of the mound that required Cordero to field. But like his second-inning mistake, he was caught too off-balanced going to his right, and he completely air-mailed his throw to a covering Schreiber, allowing Jones to advance to second.
Two batters later, Myles Straw roped an RBI game-tying double to right.
After the Red Sox came up empty-handed in the eighth – which included an inning-ending strikeout by Dalbec – Tanner Houck was summoned for the ninth. But after getting Jose Ramirez on a groundout, Josh Naylor smoked Houck’s 2-0 slider on the outer half into the Monster seats for the go-ahead and ultimately game-winning homer, complete with an epic bat flip from the left-hander.
