It was the top of the eighth inning at Camden Yards and the Red Sox were fighting for their playoff lives against the moribund Orioles.
Four pitches later, the inning was over. The Red Sox offered as much resistance as the Afghan army when Kabul fell.
There are a myriad of reasons to be disgusted with the Red Sox right now: atrocious defense; dumpster fire relief pitching; slumping sluggers. But laying down for somebody named Joey Krehbiel is a baseball sin.
What a sorry way to potentially go out.
One-pitch groundout; two-pitch groundout; one-pitch pop-up.
In the grand scheme, this late-season collapse isn’t comparable to 2011, when the Red Sox went 7-20 down the stretch after playing like the best team in baseball for four months. Most people projected them to win 79 or 80 games this season. Either way, the Red Sox overachieved.
But that offers no solace when the futile foursome of Bruce Zimmermann, Marcos Diplan, Joey Krehbiel and Cole Sulser hold an offense with the third-highest OPS in baseball to three hits over nine innings. Baltimore pitchers retired the final 12 Red Sox hitters in a row. The final nine went down on just 24 pitches.
Over the weekend, we saw Giancarlo Stanton deliver two mammoth eighth-inning home runs that swung the series for the Yankees. He homered Tuesday, too, blasting a game-padding bomb against the Blue Jays.
The Red Sox, meanwhile, have scored just 11 runs in their last four games.
With five games left against the Orioles and Nationals, the Red Sox are still in position to make the playoffs. They hold a half-game lead over Seattle and 1-game lead over Toronto for the second wild card spot.
But they may have blown their best opportunity to gain ground. They lost to the 51-win Orioles when Chris Sale was on the mound.
And they went down in just four pitches.
