The Red Sox were not able to follow-up their division clinching night with another winning performance, falling 4-2 to the Toronto Blue Jays.
This is, perhaps, no great surprise given the team the Red Sox fielded for the second game of their series against the Jays. While it still had plenty enough talent to be competitive, with Mark Buehrle throwing the ball much better these days, the Red Sox felt the absence of the likes of Dustin Pedroia (who would eventually enter the game in the late-going) and Mike Napoli against the opposing lefty.
They would manage to push across a couple of runs, at least, with one coming in the sixth on a Jonny Gomes ground ball as Buehrle began to tire, and another in the seventh thanks to a pair of defensive gaffes from the Jays that allowed Xander Bogaerts to reach third free-of-charge and score on David Ross' ground out.
Other than that, though, Boston's lineup was largely held silent. This wasn't one of those games where they were wasting baserunner after baserunner. They were just making out after out.
Still, on some nights those two runs might have been enough for Clay Buchholz. But he really wasn't at his best Saturday night. He started the game off well, sitting Jose Reyes and Brett Lawrie down on strikes in the first inning. But that would be the only strikeouts of the night for Buchholz. The Blue Jays would finally get to making some hard contact in the fourth, where five hits and an error by Buchholz himself proved sufficient to bring three runs in.
Not a banner night for the Red Sox by any means. The lineup was quiet, Buchholz was imperfect, and of course there's the loss to top it all off. But there were no spontaneously combusting starters, and if Ryan Dempster wasn't dominant in his first outing in relief, he did manage a decent inning, surrendering a hit and a walk with two down but striking out Moises Sierra to end the frame.
An underwhelming performance, but one with underwhelming consequences,at least for now.