G127: Cleveland 6, Red Sox 3

Cleveland - 000 202 110 - 6 13  1
Red Sox   - 000 000 300 - 3  5  0

The Red Sox have tied their longest losing streak of the season and the Yankees drew another game closer in the AL East standings. Is it be time to hit the panic button? I'm confident that some people in the media will suggest you do exactly that, but ... it's a friggin three-game losing streak and the MFY are still a whopping eight games out of first.

Shane Bieber (6.1-5-3-0-5, 82) kept the lid on the Boston bats for six innings, allowing only two baserunners. In that time, the bottom of the Cleveland lineup did damage against Nathan Eovaldi (5.1-10-4-1-2, 87).

The Red Sox were able to keep the game scoreless when Mitch Moreland threw out a runner at the plate in the second and Eovaldi stranded two other men. But Cleveland got four straight hits with two outs in the fourth: singles from Melky Cabrera, Jason Kipnis, and Yan Gomes, and a double from Greg Allen.

Eovaldi worked around a leadoff double in the fifth, but Cabrera led off the sixth with a home run. One out later, Gomes and Allen singled. Brantley's two-out hit scored Gomes and the inning ended (eventually) when Brantley was out 8-2-6 trying advance to second. Umpire Gerry Davis was completely out of position. Xander Bogaerts's glove tag might as well have been behind a brick wall, but Davis made a confident call - safe! - as though the entire play was directly in front of his eyes. Bogaerts, however, ran off the field and into the dugout, confident it was the third out. The Red Sox challenged the call - and it was overturned. Third out.

Cleveland added a fifth run without a hit against Brandon Workman in the Seventh. Jose Ramirez walked, stole second, went to third on a grounder, and scored on a fly ball in the right-field corner than Mookie Betts made an excellent catch on, running right towards the wall, but stopped maybe a foot short.

Bieber had set down the Red Sox in order in the first, striking out two, but needed 21 pitches. His work was much more streamlined in subsequent innings, as he threw only 12, 7, 9, and 9 pitches. The only baserunners had been Andrew Benintendi's single in the fourth and Eduardo Nunez's double in the sixth.

But the Red Sox suddenly attacked in the seventh, banging out three hits in a four-pitch span. Benintendi doubled, J.D. Martinez singled, and Bogaerts took a strike before doubling in a run. Moreland sent a rocket to deep center, but Allen ran it down and made a Bradley-esque sliding catch in front of the garage door. JDM tagged and walked home. After a pitching change, Ian Kinsler's groundout scored Bogaerts. The Red Sox trailed 5-3.

Gomes homered in the eighth and the Red Sox could not do anything else over the final two innings. Andrew Miller struck out Steve Pearce and Jackie Bradley and got Betts on a ground ball to second. Brad Hand pitched the ninth and the only blemish came when Kipnis failed to catch Bogaerts's two-out pop-up on the infield dirt. It was a strange error. Seeing a flicker of light, the Fenway crowd came to life, standing and roaring for yet another rally. But Moreland went down swinging.

I listened to the Cleveland announcers for the first half of the game (they became insufferable when their team took the lead). When Benintendi batted in the first, one of them noted that the left fielder had "made a diving catch last night, taking Greg Allen away from a hit." ... Never heard robbing a hit described that way before.

Switching over to NESN in the sixth, Dave O'Brien said Bieber was "throwing a lot of strikes" as the pitch count display showed 68% strikes. However, I recall O'Brien saying only a few nights ago that throwing 70% strikes was not very good.

With two outs in the top of the sixth, Joe Kelly had a 1-2 count on Brantley. OB said "the crowd is itching for a strikeout". No! They were not. They were "itching" for an OUT. I'm sure every single Red Sox fan in attendance did not give a shit how it happened. O'Brien does this all the time - and it bugs the hell out of me. (Surprise!)

Shane Bieber / Nathan Eovaldi

Betts, RF
Benintendi, LF
Martinez, DH
Bogaerts, SS
Moreland, 1B
Kinsler, 2B
Nunez, 3B
Leon, C
Bradley, CF

Two more factoids from an amazing season:

1. The Red Sox have lost more than two consecutive games only once this year.

2. The Red Sox have had 10 winning streaks longer than their worst losing streak.

Boston lost three in a row from April 21-24. The most recent losses - Sunday to the Rays and last night to Cleveland - are only the second time in two months that the team has lost consecutive games (also July 24 and 26).

Here are the 39 wins and 12 losses since June 21:

W W
L
W W W W
L
W
L
W W W W W W W W W W
L
W W W
L
W W
LL
W W W W
L
W W W W W W
L
W W W W W
L
W W
L L

The 10 winning streaks longer than the worst losing streak: 9, 8, 4, 4, 4, 4, 10, 4, 6, and 5 games.

(They have also had three streaks of three wins, so that's 13 winning streaks as long or longer than their worst losing streak. ... That is not a record. I looked at the 2001 Mariners and they had 13 streaks that matched or bettered their four-game losing streak.)