It's unclear what, exactly, the Red Sox did to so anger the baseball gods Sunday, but it must have been something.
After Kike Hernandez walloped a mammoth two-run homer in the second inning, briefly staking them a 2-0 lead, virtually nothing went right the rest of the afternoon. You name an aspect of the game, they bungled it.
Nathan Eovaldi, who was brilliant in his last outing (one run allowed over 6.2 innings to snap a two-game losing streak), showed promising signs in the first, retiring the Royals in order on just six pitches.
But that would be last routine inning. He needed 30 pitches to get through the second and 36 more to get through the third. And, his struggles weren't limited to just pitching. After allowing a leadoff single in the third, Eovaldi was gifted a comebacker from Carlos Santana that all the makings of 1-6-3 double play.
Instead...
"I kind of took my eye off it a little too soon,'' confessed Eovaldi, after the Sox had sputtered to a dispiriting 7-3 setback, "and it hit off the tip of my glove. We got the one out out of it, but that situation right there, a routine double play, I've got to be able to make that play. Anytime on a hot day, when you leave your defense out there, I just don't feel like it's going to be a good combination.''
The inning unraveled from there, with the Royals scoring three times.
An inning earlier Eovaldi had gotten poor defensive support from first baseman Bobby Dalbec, who booted a ball hit right at him, allowing Adalberto Mondesi to score from third with an unearned run.
And then, after Eovaldi failed to turn two, Christian Arroyo was guilty of the same issue. With runners at first and one out, Arroyo couldn't handle a hard-hit ball, with the carom off his glove carrying into foul territory instead of what could have been another double play.
"I thought Nate was good; I thought our defense was horrible,'' summarized Alex Cora. "We didn't make a play on a ground ball off the end of the bat (to Dalbec) and he's the first one to admit, on a ground ball right at him, we don't turn the double play and we just get one out. When you give any lineup 27 outs, they're going to make you pay.
"I think defensively, we didn't help him. He didn't help himself, he'll tell you. It was just a grind. We still had a chance to win the ballgame, but our defense wasn't good enough and that put us in a bad spot.''
You could count on one hand the number of games the number of times defense has cost the Red Sox, but Sunday certainly qualified as one.
When the defense wasn't self-immolating, the offense was busy sputtering. The Red Sox started the day with the best two-out numbers in the game, leading the American League in runs scored (156) with two out. In fact, 43.5% of their runs have come with two out.
But you wouldn't know it by watching them Sunday.
After Hernandez's homer, the Red Sox had runners in scoring position with two out in each of the next three innings and failed to produce a single run.
In the third, a two-out triple by J.D. Martinez went to waste. In the fourth, the Sox had runners at the corners with two down and left them there as Kevin Plawecki grounded out. It was more of the same in the fifth as the Sox sandwiched a couple of singles around two outs, only to have Rafael Devers swing and miss to strand both.
After two strikeouts in the seventh, the Sox stitched together consecutive two out singles, only to see Xander Bogaerts fan. And in the eighth, they loaded the bases with one out, bringing Marwin Gonzalez to the plate, representing the potential tying run. That threat, too, was quelled as Gonzalez hit into a double play,
"I think offensively, we just didn't get the big hit,'' sighed Cora.
But wait -- there's more.
If the defeat weren't disappointing enough, the Sox also lost two players in-game to injuries. Arroyo and Hernandez collided as they chased down a shallow fly ball in center, resulting in Arroyo walking off the field gingerly. X-rays were negative, but he's got a serious bone bruise just below his right kneecap. And backup catcher Kevin Plawecki appeared to stain his left hamstring and left in the fourth inning, negating a planned day off for starter Christian Vazquez. Plawecki's status will be re-evaluated Monday.
The lone good news was that Monday brings the team its second off-day in the span of four, an opportunity to recover from their wounds -- psychological and physical -- before a huge series with the Rays begins Tuesday.
It's not much consolation, but then again, positives were as difficult to find as bad barbeque in Kansas City on Sunday.