Bats silent again as Red Sox fall to Diamondbacks for third straight loss

Without Roman Anthony and Wilyer Abreu, the Boston Red Sox offense has spent the past few days desperately searching for answers.

So far nothing has worked.

The Red Sox bats fell quiet once again in Saturday’s 5-1 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks, marking the club’s third straight loss at a time in the season where the club can’t afford any slip-ups.

It also marked Boston’s second time in three games where the offense managed just one run, and it was nearly three straight if not for Friday’s four-run rally in the eighth.

“The at bats weren’t great today,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters in Arizona. “We felt like offensively we hit a lot of ground balls today, we hit some balls hard too, especially towards the end of the game, but early on we didn’t do much.”

While the offense was the primary issue, Boston’s pitching and defense weren’t dialed in either. Lucas Giolito once again struggled with his command, and while his final line of four runs (two earned) over five-plus innings wasn’t horrible, he allowed seven hits, three walks and ran up a pitch count of 53 through his first two innings.

He also had just two strikeouts and five whiffs over 94 pitches.

“A lot of pitches, a lot of foul balls, we didn’t make a play behind him,” Cora said. “Overall he seemed erratic, a few walks here and there and we have to work with him during the week and get back to where we were a few weeks ago.”

Arizona took a 3-0 lead in the second after Trevor Story booted what could have been an inning-ending double play. Instead the ball bounced off Story’s glove, allowing two runs to score on the Jake McCarthy grounder and then a third on Geraldo Perdomo’s subsequent sacrifice fly.

The Red Sox got a run back on Masataka Yoshida’s RBI single in the third, but the club later stranded men at the corners in both the fourth and sixth, squandering what turned out to be the club’s last scoring opportunities.

Boston ultimately only got three at bats with runners in scoring position, going 1 for 3 while stranding six men, and the Diamondbacks slowly pulled away with an RBI single by McCarthy in the fourth and a sacrifice fly by Blaze Alexander in the seventh.

Catch of the year

With one out in the bottom of the fifth, Corbin Carroll got ahold of a Giolito changeup and pulled it to deep right-center field.

The ball looked ticketed for Chase Field’s Pool Suite, until Ceddanne Rafaela went full Spiderman.

Running full speed and without breaking stride, the Red Sox center fielder took one glance at the wall, leapt up and dug his cleat into the cushion to give himself an extra boost. Then, in one smooth motion, Rafaela reached over the wall and snatched the ball out of the air for one of the most astonishing home run robberies we’ve seen in years.

Giolito couldn’t believe his eyes. Neither could NESN’s Dave O’Brien, who feared for a moment Rafaela’s celebratory roar was due to an injury until the outfielder produced the ball.

After the game, Rafaela was asked if it was the best catch of his big league career so far.

“Yeah, probably,” he said.

Incredibly, it wouldn’t be the last home run robbery of the game.

Not to be outdone, Arizona’s Alexander made an incredible catch against the left field wall of his own to rob Alex Bregman of a solo shot in the top of the eighth. More impressive is the fact that Alexander started the game at third base and had just moved to left field an inning prior.

Wilson’s great escape

Giolito came back out for the sixth inning but promptly allowed back-to-back singles to end his outing. Trailing by three runs, Cora gave the ball to left-hander Justin Wilson, who struck out three straight Diamondbacks to escape the jam and keep his team in the game.

Another outfield misadventure

Jarren Duran and Rafaela have been two of baseball’s best defensive outfielders this season, but Saturday marked the second time in a little over a week the two have gotten crossed up.

Back on Aug. 27 Duran and Rafaela had a miscommunication that resulted in a catchable fly ball landing between them. Saturday something similar happened when Duran pulled up early on a ball that should have been his, deferring to Rafaela despite the center fielder being too far to make the grab.

Rafaela said after the game he’d called Duran off and thought he could catch it, and Cora defended his outfielders by noting that plays like those aren’t as easy as big league outfielders make them look.

“You can say it’s lack of communication maybe, yeah, but there’s a lot of elements in left-center,” Cora said. “I’m not making excuses for them but it’s not that easy as people make it seem.”

Missed opportunity

With the Yankees and Blue Jays playing a crucial series, the Red Sox have an opportunity to gain ground on both of their division rivals this weekend.

So far they haven’t taken advantage.

Friday night’s loss dropped the Red Sox 4.5 games behind the Blue Jays in the AL East standings. Saturday provided an opportunity to gain back that ground with the Yankees’ win, but the Red Sox couldn’t capitalize.

Now, they remain 4.5 games back of Toronto and are also 1.5 games behind New York in the AL Wild Card. Boston will get one more chance to make up ground on one of their rivals Sunday.