Welcome to the nightmare scenario.
The Sox were given a gift of a game tonight, with the Yankees lost starter Nathan Eovaldi after the first inning due to elbow pain, and threw it away. An impromptu bullpen start from the opposition should make a game very difficult to lose indeed. And the Red Sox were at least putting themselves in position to make good on that through the first six innings. They held a 4-1 lead, with Pomeranz going 5.1 innings with one earned run.
Now, 4-1 was not as big a lead as it should have been. The Red Sox have themselves to blame for this loss on a couple of counts. They couldn't advance David Oritz from first base after a leadoff walk in the second. Then, in the third, with the bases loaded, one out, and their 3-4 hitters up, the Sox managed just the one run on an RBI ground out from Mookie Betts. They repeated that process in the fourth, with Benintendi bringing in the run this time.
Worst of all, though, was the fifth. The Red Sox, believe it or not, have actually been hitting quite well with the bases loaded and zero outs this year. But damn if the failures don't stand out. Just like tonight's! Bogaerts walked, Mookie Doubled him to third, and with first base open, the Yankees gave Ortiz the intentional walk to give the Red Sox that most promising of situations. Hanley Ramirez would manage to get the ball into the outfield, but not deep enough for a sacrifice fly, and somehow that was the best result that the Sox would manage, with Bradley popping out near the Red Sox dugout, and a pinch-hitting Aaron Hill going down on strikes.
The Sox did pick up a couple more runs in the sixth, but then came the seventh, and oh man but the game went straight to hell.
First, the dumb. For all the Red Sox were able to grab baserunner after baserunner, they weren't able to pick up that one opportune hit. The Yankees, on the other hand? With Matt Barnes in to start the seventh, they just kept on hitting ground balls, and not a one of them found a glove. Five times the Red Sox infielders went diving for the Yankees' batted balls off of Barnes and Abad, and every single one made their way into the outfield, erasing Boston's lead. The Yankees finally got a really solid hit when Junichi Tazawa entered the game, with Starlin Castro doubling two men in to make it 6-4 for New York.
On the bright side, the Red Sox took what would have simply been an incredibly frustrating game and made it downright depressing as well. Tazawa gave up a home run in the eighth to really suggest it might be time for Heath Hembree to make his way back up, and then the Benny Hill music hit as Robbie Ross proceeded to drive in runs all on his own with three wild pitches, leaving it at 9-4.
And somehow the worst was yet to come. Already Mookie Betts had left the game with calf tightness because, y'know, why not. But up to bat in the ninth inning of this disgrace of a game, David Ortiz fouled a ball off his right leg, and had to be helped off the field. If he's done, it's hard to imagine an already struggling Red Sox team managing to rally from that. The season may have gone from flagging to fallen with one foul ball.