Red Sox vibes on the decline after back-to-back disappointments at Fenway

BOSTON -- It was just four days ago that the mood in the Red Sox' postgame clubhouse bordered on triumphant. Fresh off a 12-2 thumping of the Angels in Anaheim, the Red Sox had just completed a 10-game road trip with a 7-3 record, something that few -- if any -- people had any expectation of happening.

Yet just two games later, the vibes have declined significantly. 

Certainly, yes, despite the strong start for Boston, just about anyone in baseball would have predicted an Orioles season win over the Red Sox. Yet the manner in which the Red Sox have lost their first two games at Fenway Park this season has been particularly deflating.

On Tuesday, after a dud-like 20th anniversary celebration of the 2004 team, the 2024 edition of the Red Sox mustered just two hits all game.They made two errors in the field (and that only scrapes the surface of their poor defensive play), they got clowned on the basepaths by Gunnar Henderson, and they farted their way to a 7-1 loss in front of a sellout crowd on an otherwise beautiful spring day in Boston.

That postgame clubhouse scene involved Jarren Duran telling reporters "I just [bleeping] suck" minutes after Trevor Story fought through tears while facing a six-month recovery for his shoulder injury.

It was ugly, no doubt, but to the Red Sox' credit, they seemed to have shaken it off fairly quickly.

Duran led off the first inning on Wednesday night with an opposite-field single and then created a run with his legs in the third inning, Kutter Crawford retired 11 of the first 12 batters he faced en route to pitching five scoreless innings, and the Boston bats slowly built a lead -- 1-0 in the third, to 3-0 in the fourth, to 5-0 in the fifth off an opposite-field home run for Triston Casas.

On a chilly and drizzly night, the ballpark was buzzing.

Alas, it didn't last.

Reliever Isaiah Campbell promptly gave up three runs in the top of the sixth, surrendering four consecutive hits -- three singles and a double -- in his inning of work.

"Trying to get a shutdown inning right there, after scoring two. It didn't happen," Cora said of Campbell's outing. 

The Red Sox were sent down quietly in the bottom of the inning with three strikeouts, before the wheels really fell off in the seventh.

Chris Martin, who's been just about untouchable since the start of last season, was wild. He gave up a one-out bloop single to Ryan O'Hearn, who advanced to second on a passed ball. (Ryan Mountcastle swung at the pitch that Connor Wong mishandled, and Cora briefly argued for a check to first after the umpires met to discuss ... something else. That did not prove to be productive.) Mountcastle ended up drawing a walk on a wild pitch from Martin, which allowed O'Hearn to trot to third. Cedric Mullens then reached base on a catcher's interference on the first pitch of his at-bat, with his late swing clearly hitting Wong's mitt.

With the bases now loaded, Martin fired a pitch into the dirt on a 1-2 count to Colton Cowser (who killed the Red Sox a day earlier). Wong couldn't handle the pitch, which deflected off Wong's knee back out toward the mound. A sliding Martin tried unsuccessfully to get the wild pitch back to Wong, but O'Hearn slid home safely to cut Boston's lead to 5-4.

Martin briefly appeared to be finding a way out of trouble, striking out Cowser and getting Jordan Westburg into an 0-2 count with two outs. Yet he left a 2-2 pitch over the heart of the plate, and Westburg crushed it, sending it over the Monster in left-center and giving Baltimore a 7-5 lead.

The Red Sox' offense was completely silenced over the final four innings (Cowser's glove had a little something to do with that), with Boston hitters going 1-for-13 with nine strikeouts from the sixth inning through the end of the game.

After going 82-80 at home over the past two seasons (and historically worse more recently), the Red Sox have begun their home schedule with an 0-2 record this year.

"We haven't made Fenway uncomfortable," Cora said of that issue earlier in the day on WEEI. "We play well, [Red Sox fans are] gonna show up. They're gonna be loud. They're gonna be drinking beer off the boot, all that stuff. It's gonna be wild. But when you play games like that [Tuesday], well, 'Sweet Caroline' is gonna be 'Sweet Caroline.' Whatever, you sing it, bo-bo-bo, and then you leave. We want fans to stay here, but it's up to us to play at the level that's expected, not only here but at this level. And hopefully we can do it."

The fans who stuck it out through the cold and rain sang "Sweet Caroline" before watching Keegan Akin and Craig Kimbrel buzz through 1-2-3 innings in the eighth and ninth. It's not what Cora had in mind.

And the positive vibes that the Red Sox brought back from the West Coast might be on life support, as another cold and rainy night against the Orioles at Fenway Park awaits.