Coming into Wednesday's game, the Red Sox had compiled the best fielding percentage in all of baseball over the previous six weeks, committing just 10 errors in their previous 41 games.
With improvement on the left side of the infield, the return of Trevor Story to second, the defensive upgrades of Eric Hosmer and, more recently, rookie Triston Casas at first, the infield defense was vastly improved. In the outfield, KikΓ© Hernandez returning from a long IL stint bolstered the defense in center.
From a defensive standpoint, things were looking up.
Not that you would have known it watching the Red Sox boot the ball around Fenway in a 5-3 loss to the New York Yankees Wednesday night. It qualified as the team's sloppiest game in months. The Sox committed a total of three errors, their most in a game since July 27.
Everywhere you looked, there were miscues.
* Rookie catcher Connor Wong, who has otherwise been solid behind the plate since his latest promotion, got caught being too casual in throwing the ball back to the mound, resulting in a double steal on the part of the Yankees.
* Shortstop Xander Bogaerts couldn't glove a ball hit up the middle in the fifth, the first misplay of an inning full of them, leading to three unearned runs.
* On a single to right by Gleyber Torres, the Sox should have had the theme from Benny Hill blaring in the background as their soundtrack. First, first baseman-in-training Christian Arroyo failed to properly position himself as the cut-off man in the infield, with a throw from outfielder Alex Verdugo trickling all the way to the plate. Wong, spying Torres having taken too wide a turn at first, fired there, with second baseman Hernandez smartly covering. But Wong's throw was way wide of its intended target, and ended up rolling down the right field line.
"We had Gleyber there, he was a dead duck, and (Wong) threw the ball away,'' lamented Alex Cora.
Verdugo, perhaps making baseball history, then had a chance to throw home from right field for the second time on the same play. Alas, it was too late to nab Torres, who scored on a single, but in reality, more closely resembled your basic "Little League home run.'' Thus, were the Yankees gifted a 3-0 lead.
Still, there would be more.
* In the eighth inning, with the bases loaded and one out, J.D. Martinez appeared to have beaten out the back end of a double play, as the second Red Sox run of the inning crossed the plate to pull them to within a run at 4-3. But a replay challenge revealed that, just as he tried to lunge for the bag to beat the throw, Martinez came up short of the bag with his back foot while striding over the bag with his front one. He was ruled out, and a run came off the board.
* Finally, outfielder Abraham Almonte misplayed two straight balls in center in the ninth. He broke in instead of back on a bullet hit by Giancarlo Stanton and it rolled to the warning track. Then, on the next batter, Almonte tracked a shot from Torres to the wall in center. Unfamiliar with his surroundings and wary of backing into the wall, a distracted Almonte had the ball hit off the heel of his glove and drop for a run-scoring double.
Roll all of these incidents together, and it wasn't hard to figure out how one of the teams was in first place in the division, heading for a first-round bye in the postseason, while another is taking up residence in the division basement, playing out the string of a season that went south a long time ago.
"We haven't played bad defense in a while,'' noted Cora.
All of which is true. But then the Red Sox seemed intent on making up for that, all in the span of a few innings.
Certainly, rookie Brayan Bello deserved better. He blanked the Yankees over the first four innings before the clown show unfolded in the fifth left him with three runs, albeit all unearned.
But again, the difference Wednesday night was one team intent on doing the right things -- noting Wong's casual throws back to the mound, for instance -- and another, for a night anyway, incapable of getting out of its own way.
When you look at the grotesque won-loss record the Red Sox have amassed inside their own division (20-42), it's difficult not to think about the so-called little things that have contributed to such failures. How many games could have turned out differently with more attention to detail, improved fundamentals, or just better defensive play?
Not that it matters now, with three weeks to go in the season.
But a loss like the one that took place Wednesday is a handy reference point. If you want to know why the Red Sox are going to finish in last place, some of the answers were right in front of you.