HOUSTON — For teams surging in playoff races, scoreboard-watching is one of the most exhilarating undertakings of the late summer. Glimpses of distance gained in pennant races add an additional layer of joy to every victory. Yet the out-of-town scores can also add pain and poignancy to each individual defeat.
And for the Red Sox, who continue to experience the cruelest sort of Groundhog Day imaginable in a pennant race, too many August days have delivered foreboding messages. On Monday night, that pattern continued. The Sox’ late-innings black hole appeared in Space City, with the team blowing a one-run, eighth-inning lead en route to a 5-4 walkoff loss to the Astros at Minute Maid Park.
That defeat, coupled with a win by the Royals, left the Sox 41⁄2 games behind Kansas City for the third and final American League wild-card spot. Advertisement “It’s a beautiful game, but sometimes it’s tough,” said righthander Lucas Sims, who was charged with a blown save (his second as a Red Sox, and the team’s major league-leading 12th since the All-Star break – four more than any other team), unable to preserve a 4-3 advantage while allowing a run in the eighth. “Every [game] is important.
It’s definitely not going to be easy. No one is going to go out there and roll over for you, but we’ve got a resilient group.” It will take more than resilience to overcome the team’s current gap in the standings.
The Sox will require a dramatic reversal of late-innings fortu.