McAdam: Nightmare season continues with lost lead and injury in New York

Remember last April, when everything went right and the Red Sox almost couldn't lose?

That's history now, and this April (and late March, for that matter) are very far removed from that idyllic start. At this point, this isn't a baseball season anymore. It's more like a three-week Murphy's Law come to life.

You name it, and it will go wrong -- or already has -- for the Red Sox.

When they hit, they don't pitch. When they pitch, they don't hit. And then there are games like Wednesday night, where a little bit of everything seems to go wrong. Just when it seemed the Red Sox were starting to get their rotation in order, another critical part of their game came unglued.



Nathan Eovaldi delivered the third quality start for the Red Sox rotation in the last five games, following soon after Eduardo Rodriguez (Friday) and David Price (Sunday). Eovaldi gave the Sox six strong innings, allowing a solo run on just three hits. Finally, there was reason to believe the starting rotation -- a perceived strength, around which the roster was constructed -- was, however belatedly, rounding into form.

Unlike his first three starts, he exhibited good control, issuing just one walk. When he left, the Sox were firmly in control, 3-1.

But the following inning, things spiraled downward quickly. Brandon Workman allowed a leadoff single, then walked two of the next three hitters he faced. In came Ryan Brasier, who had been unscored upon in seven of his first eight appearances this season as one of Alex Cora's two most trusted high-leverage relievers.

Things began well enough when Brasier threw two hellacious sliders to get ahead of Brett Gardner. But on an 0-and-2 count, Brasier threw a fastball over the middle of the plate that Gardner swatted into the seats in right for a grand slam, turning a two-run Red Sox lead into a two-run deficit.

"We tried to go up in the zone and it wasn't up enough,'' Cora told reporters. "It was kind of like right in his swing path. But before that, we walked two guys and in any ballpark, but especially here, we've got to avoid traffic there and we didn't do a good job in that inning and we paid the price.''

"Had a plan to go after him, got him right where I wanted to get him and didn't execute a pitch,'' confessed Brasier.

It was the first blown save of the season for the Red Sox bullpen, and the timing couldn't have been worse. Just when the Sox were getting a few strong performances from the rotation, the back end sprung a costly leak.

A win would have at least given the Red Sox a split of the series and a chance to regroup with Thursday's off-day before their weekend set with the Tampa Bay Rays. Instead, the Sox are stuck with a demoralizing loss, having allowed what looked like a big win slip away with eight outs to go.

Those kinds of defeats can stick with a team under ordinary circumstances, but the Red Sox have other issues on their mind.

For now, they don't have a healthy second baseman and there are new doubts about Dustin Pedroia's future after the veteran infielder asked out of the game in the second inning after experiencing "something weird'' on a swing in his first and only at-bat of the night.

Out came Pedroia, and in went Eduardo Nunez, who has battled a bad back. But playing with just three position players on the bench, the Sox had no other alternatives.

"He was down,'' acknowledged Cora of Pedroia. "I haven't seen him like that. Hopefully, it's nothing serious and something where he just got scared. We'll know more tomorrow.''

With Brock Holt (scratched cornea) on a rehab assignment, the Sox are likely to place Pedroia in the injured list and call up Tzu-Wei Lin for Friday.

It's too soon to jump to conclusion on Pedroia, who will stay behind in New York and visit with a doctor Thursday. But this feels ominous, to say the least, and eerily reminiscent of last May, when, after joining the Sox following a rehab assignment, Pedroia played three games, got scratched from the lineup in Houston and was placed on the DL.

Pedroia maintained at the time that he was merely dealing with some loose scar tissue and that he'd back quickly. He never played another game last season.

The Sox went on to a win a franchise-record 108 games and the World Series without Pedroia, so it can't be said that he's indispensable. But clearly, they're better off with a healthy Pedroia at second, and for the foreseeable future, they won't have that.

Maybe Pedroia's recovery won't be long. Maybe the bullpen will be overcome a bad night and resume pitching well in high-leverage spots. And maybe the rotation's improvement will continue.

But for now, you'd be hard-pressed to find many positives associated with this team. It's as if they're being given some karmic payback for the way things began a year ago.