The Red Sox did one thing well while getting swept by Miami Marlins

BOSTON -- The Red Sox got swept by the Miami Marlins at Fenway Park. It was ugly. The Boston offense was nonexistent, the defense was bad, and when the pitching was good like it was in the finale from Brayan Bello, it ended up not meaning a thing.

A 10-1 final, a 6-2 final, a 2-0 final, and the Red Sox went from being one game over .500 to two games under .500 after getting swept for the third time at home by an NL opponent this season. Ugly stuff.

But there was one minor accomplishment the Red Sox managed to pull off in the series, and that was keeping Luis Arraez in check to a certain degree.

Arraez is, by far, the best hitter in baseball these days, and he entered the series with a .399 batting average. With 111 hits in 278 at-bats, the prospect of Arraez maintaining a .400 average this season seemed awfully possible.

Arraez maintained that clip with a 2-for-5 night at the plate in the opener. After that, though, Arraez went 1-for-5 in the middle game of the series and 0-for-4 in the finale.

With that 3-for-14 showing at the plate, Arraez's batting average dropped from .399 to .392.

By comparison, Arraez hit .429 in the four-game series against Pittsburgh that preceded the Boston series, and he hit .571 in a three-game set with Toronto before that. He hit .667 in a two-game series vs. Washington in mid-June. This week's performance was his worst work at the plate since he went 0-for-12 in a three-game series in Seattle.

He's still the leader in baseball by 61 points, so this series may end up being a mere blip on an otherwise sterling season. But if Arraez ends up falling short of becoming the first player to hit .400 since Red Sox legend Ted Williams did it in 1941, the modern-day Red Sox at least did their part in stopping it from happening.

Now if they could just win some more baseball games, they could produce an actual accomplishment that might help them this season. As it stands now at 40-42, it's looking more like the summer will be spent tracking these minor happenings instead of following a Red Sox run to the playoffs.