Rule or no rule, this should be a wake-up call for the Red Sox

Rule 5.09(c)(4)

It's the rule that paralyzed the players, the managers and the fans at Rogers Centre in the seventh inning of what ultimately would be a 2-1 Blue Jays win over the Red Sox Monday night.

With runners on first and third and one out, Ceddanne Rafaela lofted a fly ball to center field that would seemingly be deep enough to get Anthony Seigler in from third base. But both Nick Sogard (who was at first) and Seigler had taken off on the hit, thinking there was two outs (which the ballpark scoreboard was flashing) when, in fact, there was just one.

The throw from center fielder Brett Bateman sailed into first baseman Vlad Guerrero Jr., easily giving the Jays an inning-ending double play. Then came the confusion. After 15 minutes of consulting with the two managers and the replay office in New York, crew chief Chris Guccione announced to the crowd that because the throw game into first and not third, it became a "timing play," not a "force play," and the Red Sox's run would be allowed.

“Both Boston runners, thinking there were two outs, just took off," Guccione told a pool reporter following the game. "When the second out was made, now we have two runners who have failed to return and tag up correctly. At that time, the guy from third had crossed home plate and the guy who was at first was standing at second. Toronto knew he hadn’t tagged up and threw to first base to make the third out. Well, that’s a time play, meaning it’s not a force play. If it’s a force play, the run does not score automatically. If it’s a time play -- meaning, ‘Was the out made before or after the runner crossed home plate?’ -- in this case, the runner crossed before the appeal play was made [at first]. In this play, it’s what you call an apparent fourth out."

Chaos will often lead to conversation. And so it did.

But the real talk after the Red Sox's third loss in a row should be about how this looked far too familiar to the kind of images we thought this team put in the rearview mirror seven weeks ago. Good pitching, but not good hitting. No home runs. And little miscues that don't help matters, such as forgetting how many outs there are.

"We’ve got to know there’s one out, regardless of what’s on the board or not," Red Sox manager Chad Tracy told reporters. "Yes, it was a very weird situation where players on both sides appeared to be confused on the outs."

Certainly, thanks to the historic run through late June and all of July, the Red Sox have bought some benefit of the doubt. They are still firmly in the playoff picture, sitting in the second wild card spot, 4 1/2 games ahead of Texas and six over the Twins. And the first wild card spot is still in the Sox's sights, residing 1 1/2 games in back of the Yankees.

But if this team has learned anything during this unforgettable 2026 season, it's how fortunes can reverse course on a dime.

In these last three games, the Red Sox haven't hit a single home run, going 3-for-29 with runners in scoring position. That was the life they were living for the first two-plus months of the season. How did that work out? Not well. It actually marked just the second time this season they had gone three straight without claiming a single homer, the other occasion stretching from April 20-22.

From July 3 until the most recent Red Sox win, this is a club with the third-most home runs in baseball, while owning the far-and-away best batting average with runners in scoring position. The concoction wasn't that complicated, which is why what we have seen in recent days should offer a pretty powerful reminder.

"We struggled," Tracy told reporters. “I thought we did a pretty decent job in some cases of getting ourselves into good counts. We got some hittable balls in good counts and we just didn’t square up today. We had a fair amount of popouts and flyouts on hittable pitches. We were searching for the big knock and just didn’t get it tonight.”