Alex Cora sends Stern Wake-Up Call to Red Sox after the second consecutive loss to Phillies

Only a few days ago the Boston Red Sox were the talk of baseball. She had shot a sizzling 10-game winning streak from a .500 team square in the middle of the playoff race of the American League. The bats lived, the energy was electric and October really seemed like something. And then that line came to a halt in a series lost against the Cubs. Then came a series in Philadelphia. The first game ended with a 3-2 loss on July 21 and then a humiliation of 4-1 defeat the next night. The powerful violation disappeared, threw out 28 times and only pulled two free runs. The sudden crash left one man behind to answer …

After the second of those losses, manager Alex Cora made a point. A reporter presented the damn figures and asked: what should happen afterwards? After a joke, Cora became serious. “Good stuff, man. Two of the best pitchers in the large competitions,” He said, the Phillies crediting. But he didn’t stop there. “Uh, if we want to play in October, we have to find a way to touch those guys, right?” Cora added that while they fought the night before, against Cristopher Sanchez, “He was excellent … as if he only had to take your hat.”

The first loss was especially painful. Boston took the lead on July 21 in the first when Jarren Duran hit a Leadoff Home Run. But Phillies Ace Zack Wheeler Was formidable and threw 10 batters over six innings. The Red Sox Starter, Walker Buehler, was also good and received only one earned point in seven innings. The game was 2-2 in the sixth, after a run-scoring single from Trevor Story, but the bats from Boston became silent from there. The score was tied to the bottom of the tenth.

Loading with the bases and no outs, the game ended in baseball absurdity. A controlled Swing by Phillies Slugger Edmundo Sosa clashed with catcher Carlos Narváez’s glove. The referee called it the interference of catcher, and the winning run was entered. It was a strange, Walk-Off Darm Ponse, something that had never happened before in an MLB match since 1971. The confusing conclusion illustrated a cold, hard truth: Boston could not score if it made the most, opened the door for a good thing to beat them.

If the first game was a strange heart breaker, the second was a complete dismantling. Phillies left -handed Cristopher Sanchez Was inviolable and threw a complete game with 12 strikeouts and zero walks. The Red Sox only scored on a solo -home run from Rob Refnyder. The Phillies, on the other hand, quickly jumped early on starter Richard Fitts and took a 4-0 lead in the second inning on Homers by Max Kepler and Kyle Schwarber. This is the situation that Cora has given a warning about: total domination of an elite arm.

These two losses were not just a coincidence; They exposed a deep contrast to the core of this Red SOX team. The attacking firepower that was so clear for most of the year looked disturbingly weak against toppitching.

Red Sox’s Powerful, High-Whiff attack

In this series, the Red Sox was an attack that was fed by figures. The club finished fifth in the Majors in scored runs (500), sixth in stroke average (.254) and tied the fifth in Slugging percentage (.429). Their 126 home runs were ninth in the Majors. That production was fed by a Breakout season from Wilyer Abreu, who runs the team with 20 gayers, and a strong season of the offseasonal acquisition Alex Bregman, who hits .910 Ops.

The Philadelphia series revealed the fatal error of the Line -Up. The whole attack seemed to fall apart against elite pitching. Top perspective Roman Anthony was completely overwhelmed and threw out seven times in eight bits. The most important Sluggers such as Jarren Duran and Wilyer Abbreu were also closed, where they registered only one hit and six strikeouts. The only two walks of the team in the entire series came from the bottom of the order. It was a failure of top-to-bottom to arrange the battle zone, which increased a problem that this season surfaced at other times.

The consequences of this sudden cold Snap are huge for the already wild card race. And it is the Red Sox that now has the last play -off place, but the pillow has disappeared. Just before them are the New York Yankees and Seattle Mariners, and just behind are the Tampa Bay Rays and Texas Rangers, who are one and three games back respectively. A 10-game winning streak bought Boston a chair at the table, but after dropping four of their last five games, they have no margin for errors in a busy field.