all but guaranteed to extend his winning streak to three<\/a> this year, made a feet-first sliding catch and throw to first in time for an inning-ending double play.<\/p>\nBoston entered Wednesday\u2019s contest 3 for 36 with runners in scoring position, and with 38 men left on base over their four-game losing streak. Those struggles persisted on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Toronto starter Jos\u00e9 Soriano pitched six innings with just one earned run on four hits, two walks and four strikeouts, on 90 pitches (63 strikes).<\/p>\n
Soriano had a no-hitter until Ceddanne Rafaela\u2019s one-out single in the fourth, and faced the minimum until Willson Contreras led off the fifth with a home run.<\/p>\n
Yet Rafaela wasted his fourth-inning single, trying to advance all the way to third base on a wild pitch by Soriano. And though Contreras\u2019 408-foot blast to left-center tied the game and matched his career-high 24 homers in 2019, it could not awaken the slumbering, slumping Red Sox lineup.<\/p>\n
Boston\u2019s best chance came in the top of the sixth. Nick Sogard led off with a single, and Soriano issued a two-out walk to Adley Rutschman, but Contreras grounded out to end the inning.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got a good sinker, man,\u201d interim manager Chad Tracy said of Soriano.<\/p>\n
Andruw Monasterio led off the eighth with a single, and advanced to third thanks to back-to-back groundouts by Sogard and Masataka Yoshida. Like the small number of Red Sox runners before him, Monasterio stood stranded, as Rafaela popped out to Guerrero in foul territory.<\/p>\n
The game collapsed in the bottom of the eighth as Tyron Guerrero faced five batters and exited without recording an out. The Blue Jays greeted the hard-throwing righty with back-to-back singles by Guerrero and catcher Alejandro Kirk, who was replaced with pinch-runner Brandon Valenzuela. Contreras missed the opportunity to record the first out when he dropped Okamoto\u2019s foul ball, and the DH capitalized by singling to score Guerrero.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looked also like it just drifted back to the right,\u201d Tracy told reporters of the ball Contreras didn\u2019t catch. \u201cIt\u2019s just a miss. It happens, and you got to move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Things went from bad to worse after a mound visit. Guerrero intentionally walked Andr\u00e9s Gim\u00e9nez to load the bases, then battled through a nine-pitch face-off with Clement. The Blue Jays second baseman walked to force in a run and push Guerrero out of the game.<\/p>\n
Rookie left-hander Alec Gamboa, called up from Triple-A Worcester on Wednesday, allowed all three inherited runners to score. Pinch-hitter George Springer made the first out with an RBI sacrifice fly, and centerfielder Myles Straw doubled to score two. The Blue Jays threatened further damage; McAdoo singled to put runners on the corners before Gamboa retired Brett Bateman on a pop-out, and got Guerrero to fly out in his second at-bat of the inning.<\/p>\n
The game seemed miles out of reach when right-hander Matt Waldron took the mound for the top of the ninth. But the Red Sox threatened in earnest at last. Waldron opened the frame with a strikeout-looking to Rutschman, then walked Contreras. Abreu\u2019s 24th double advanced Contreras to third, and a first-pitch RBI single by Caleb Durbin scored Boston\u2019s second run of the night.<\/p>\n
Jarren Duran\u2019s 13th double of the season brought Abreu home to cut Toronto\u2019s lead to three, and forced the Blue Jays to use star closer Louis Varland. Monasterio\u2019s sacrifice fly scored yet another run, but Varland prevented further damage with a game-winning groundout from Sogard.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox collected eight hits, three walks and only struck out five times all night. They were 2 for 6 with runners in scoring position, and left five men on base. Like the previous four losses, Wednesday night finished with the tying run either on base or at the plate in the ninth inning.<\/p>\n
More bad news arrived postgame when Tracy explained why Garrett Whitlock did not pitch the eighth. Boston\u2019s dominant setup man is dealing with \u201ca little bit of elbow inflammation\u201d on and off, Tracy told reporters.<\/p>\n
The season series wraps up Thursday at 3:07 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Red Sox will be glad to see their season series against the Blue Jays come to an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[53325,11327,16780,148,53323,48,1017,53324,11868],"class_list":["post-166045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-alec-gamboa","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-jose-soriano","tag-mlb","tag-ranger-suarez","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-blue-jays","tag-tyron-guerrero","tag-willson-contreras"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}