There was eventually going to be some sort of price to pay. That was just the reality of the Kyle Schwarber acquistion.
Heading into Monday's series opener against Seattle, the payoff of Schwarber's offensive abilities has far outweighed the positional risk he represented at a spot the catcher-turned-outfielder-turned-first baseman had never played.
And even after the Red Sox' 5-4 loss to the Mariners - marking Boston's fourth straight one-run game - Schwarber represents much more of the solution than the problem.
It's just that the Red Sox finally got that uncomfortable moment with Schwarber at first, and it just so happened to come at the worst possible time.
WIth the score deadlocked at 2-2 and two outs in the seventh inning, Jake Bauers hit a first-pitch grounder against reliever Ryan Brasier to Schwarber. He couldn't handle it. What followed was painful for Alex Cora and Co.
A single to left by J.P. Crawford was followed by Mitch Haniger's game-changing three-run homer. The volume regarding the Red Sox' subpar defense was immediately cranked up to an 11.
“It’s frustrating, but we just gotta keep working at it," said Cora of his team's defensive woes. "We have to keep putting the work and hopefully we get on a quote-unquote hot streak defensively that we play clean baseball. When we do that, we’re really good. But like I always said, you give the opposition more than 27 outs, most of the time they’re going to take advantage. And it seems like right now, whenever we open up the window for them or the door – whatever you want to call it – they take advantage and we pay the price. We just gotta keep going.”
The positives coming out of the Red Sox' latest loss weren't difficult to decipher. Eduardo Rodriguez allowed just one earned run over six innings. The meat of the order - Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers - managed to make things interesting with back-to-back homers in the eighth. And Jose Iglesias infused some life at the bottom of the order with two hits, including a home run.
But results are results, and the results this time around continued to making life uncomfortable for the Red Sox heading into their last 16 regular season games.
The Sox now sit tied with the Yankees for the second Wild Card spot, with red-hot Toronto winning again to take a one-game lead over its American League East rivals.
"We’ve been struggling defensively the whole season," Cora said. "We have some good stretches that we play good defense, and when we do that, most of the time it seems like we’re winning games. That’s the bottom line. At this level, you have to be good defensively. I know we’ve got X amount of games, and we just have to keep working with them. It’s not we hope we will get better. We know we can be better. We just have to make plays.”
