BOSTON — Sunday was another game that got away for the Boston Red Sox.
After losing the first game of their four-game set with the Detroit Tigers, the Red Sox dominated the middle two games with strong offense, defense and pitching. On Sunday, they lost an early lead, but Rafael Devers’ eighth-inning, game-tying homer primed the club for a dramatic late-inning win. Then everything fell apart, once again.
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With Cam Booser on the mound in the 10th, the Tigers scored four times to beat the Red Sox 8-4 to split the series.
“We battled through the day,” manager Alex Cora said. “We did some good things but at the end, we were in a corner as far as the bullpen. Cam is really good. But like I said, at one point it’s like, here we go, let’s make pitches. And we were almost out of it. It just didn’t happen.”
The Red Sox took an early lead on run-scoring singles from Enmanuel Valdez and Jarren Duran in the first two innings and added to the lead when Devers tripled to right field, driving in Dom Smith, in the third.
But after a strong start from right-hander Brayan Bello, the Tigers started to chip into the deficit, scoring runs in the fifth and sixth. Bello came out for the seventh with 86 pitches thrown and allowed two one-out singles before Cora pulled him in favor of Justin Slaten. Slaten gave up a double to tie the game and a groundout pushed across the go-ahead run to make it 4-3. Bello finished his start with four runs allowed on eight hits and three walks with five strikeouts in 6 1/3 innings.
An inning later, Devers tied it up with his 11th homer of the season and the Red Sox nearly had the makings of a walk-off win primed for the ninth.
Rafael Devers scales the Green Monster to tie the game for the @RedSox! pic.twitter.com/u6ZsaYKuOa
— MLB (@MLB) June 2, 2024
Earlier in the day, the Red Sox placed infielders Vaughn Grissom and Romy Gonzalez on the injured list, each with a hamstring strain. They recalled Bobby Dalbec and added utility man Jamie Westbrook to the roster from Triple-A Worcester.
Westbrook had a standout spring training and was hitting .267 with an .801 OPS in 49 games in Worcester. The promotion was his first time on a big-league roster. The 28-year-old had spent 11 seasons in the minors, amassing more than 4,700 at-bats, and got put into a pressure-packed situation for his MLB debut.
In the ninth, Rob Refsnyder singled with two outs and Jarren Duran walked. With the lefty on the mound, Cora opted to pinch-hit for Wilyer Abreu, who’d jammed his ankle slipping in the dugout, and chose Westbrook for the spot.
“Obviously I’m not going to lie to you guys and say I wasn’t nervous,” Westbrook said. “But like I said before, I’ve had over 4,000 at-bats in pro ball. I’ve done it. It’s just another at bat. So I kind of reminded myself of that. Stay loose, stay calm.”
Westbrook, who grew up in Springfield, Mass., but moved to Arizona when he was 10 years old, took a called strike then laid off four straight pitches to draw a walk and load the bases.
“I was visualizing that the previous inning,” Cora said. “We knew that they only had one lefty available today but (lefty Andrew) Chafin was probably only going to be in an emergency, kind of thing.
“While the inning was going, I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s going to happen,’ and it was a great at-bat. And (Westbrook) will do that. He will. That is a guy that he finds the barrel, puts good at bats, hits the ball hard and is versatile, so for his first — we were expecting more, right? Like walk-off, what a story. But it was a big-league at-bat.”
With the bases now loaded, Connor Wong came to the plate as a pinch-hitter for Valdez and rocketed a deep fly ball to right field but it was caught in front of the warning track to end the threat.
The Red Sox challenged a leadoff infield single to open the 10th inning, but the call on the field stood and the Tigers didn’t waste the chance to pounce on the opportunity, scoring four runs on four hits off Booser. As for Abreu, Cora said he was getting treatment post game and will be re -evaluated Monday.
The series against Detroit was supposed to be one in which the Red Sox took advantage with a tough schedule on the horizon, including two against the Atlanta Braves this week. For the middle two games against Detroit, they did the job. But the chance to win the series on Sunday slipped away. Cora was adamant he wasn’t frustrated by the loss.
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“Not really,” he said. “We know where we’re at, we were playing five rookies today. We got to be realistic. We’re playing good baseball, that’s the thing, we had a chance to win three out of four.
“It didn’t happen but for some reason with this group we don’t get frustrated, just keep teaching the game and help them to be better. We got a tough one coming up with the Braves. Hopefully we win it and then go to Chicago, and have a good weekend over there. It’ll be good for us this week to gain some momentum.”
(Photo of Westbrook: Winslow Townson / Getty Images)
Jen McCaffrey is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Boston Red Sox. Prior to joining The Athletic, the Syracuse graduate spent four years as a Red Sox reporter for MassLive.com and three years as a sports reporter for the Cape Cod Times. Follow Jen on Twitter @jcmccaffrey
