On Monday night, Kyle Schwarber was responsible for a Red Sox loss.
Tuesday night, he was the reason they got a huge win.
Such is life in a playoff race, where the standings shift daily, and villains one night get a chance to be heroes the next.
On Monday night, Schwarber, still learning a new position, bobbled a routine one-hopper with two out in the seventh inning, opening the door for a game-winning three-run homer for Seattle's Mitch Haniger. It was represented the low point of Schwarber's brief time with the Red Sox, and with five teams fighting for two wild-card spots in the American League, the defeat allowed the charging Mariners to inch closer to the Sox in the standings.
It wasn't a pleasant feeling for Schwarber, who took full accountability for his error, then set about trying to forget it.
After Monday's loss, Schwarber said his first instinct was to hope for the very next ball to hit to him, so he could get a second chance at recording the third out of the inning. That didn't present itself, however.
On Tuesday, Schwarber wasn't in the starting lineup, but wouldn't you know, the game seemed to find him. In the eighth inning, with the game tied 2-2 and the bases loaded, he was called upon to pinch-hit for catcher Kevin Plawecki. After running the count full against Mariners closer Drew Steckenreider, Schwarber hooked a fastball on the outher half on a line to right-center, clearing the bases and putting the Sox up by three. They would go on to secure an 8-4 win.
Schwarber insisted his heroics at the plate Tuesday were not about making up for what happened in the field Monday.
"I'm a big believer that that was the past and you've got to be able to turn the page,'' he said. "I can't be reliving that moment over and over again. I have to be able to look back at it, learn from it and then move on. Today was a whole brand new day.''
When Schwarber was summoned to hit, he was carrying an 0-for-16 hitless skid to the plate with him. But like the error from Monday, Schwarber discarded the previous at-bats. He wasn't thinking about erasing the error and he wasn't weighed down by his recent slump. Hitters have to learn how to compartmentalize and a short memory can't be as important as a short stroke.
Which isn't to say that he wasn't energized by the challenge.
"It was definitely a spot that, to me as a baseball player, I definitely wanted to be in every time,'' he said. "Those are the spots you want to be in, to drive in runs, to put your team in front. But with (all that happened) yesterday, it was still a nice feeling to be able to get that hit in that spot.''
Schwarber, whose command of the strike zone is well-established, knew that the pressure was on Steckenreider. He had no place to put another hitter, so Schwarber was particularly selective in his swing decisions. When he finally got a full-count fastball on the outer half he thought he could handle, he drove the pitch to the wall in right-center and the Red Sox, in an instant, went from being tied to being up three.
The whole inning had the feel of a playoff game. Alex Cora used two pinch-hitters and a pinch-runner in the span of two hitters, while the Mariners utilized three different relievers. It was a chess match, all against the backdrop of a wild chase involving five teams for two playoff tickets.
"September baseball is where the push is made,'' said Schwarber. "We obviously want to go out there and keep winning baseball games and keep winning series. At the end of the day, we've got to take the result. If that's us ending up with a win at the end of the day, or us ending up with a loss at the end of the day, it is what it is. And then we keep following that process all the way until the end of the season and see where we're at.
"We're going to go out there every day, and focus on that game.''
It's a methodical approach, and one that probably works best. There's no sense in dwelling on what happened the night before.
But if you're lucky, every once in a while, you get a chance to be the hero 24 hours after being the goat.
Kyle Schwarber wasn't about to miss a second time.