Red Sox can't solve Schlittler, offensive woes in Game 1 loss to Yanks

NEW YORK -- For weeks, the Red Sox have been trying to regain their spark offensively.

They now have one more chance to find it. Tuesday’s 9-0 defeat to the electric Cam Schlittler and the Yankees in Game 1 of this American League Wild Card Series has put manager Chad Tracy’s club on the brink of elimination.

Life moves fast in the best-of-three Wild Card round, as evidenced by the fact that teams taking a 1-0 lead have gone on to win the series 21 of 24 times (88%), including 17 two-game sweeps. Home teams have won all nine series in which they have gone ahead 1-0, including eight sweeps.

But the Red Sox have faced situations just as daunting, opening the season 32-46 before going on a 32-5 surge that propelled them into the postseason.

Prior to the game, Tracy expressed some optimism that he finally had his “A” lineup together, something that hardly happened in September as key players (Ceddanne Rafaela, Willson Contreras and Adley Rutschman) missed time with injuries.

However, Schlittler, the front-runner to win the AL Cy Young Award, is tough for any lineup to produce against.

Particularly a team that didn’t have much offensive momentum going into the playoffs. In their 24 regular-season games in September, the Sox were last in the Majors in runs per game (3.0), batting average (.219) and OPS (.651).

It was as if the Walpole, Mass., native picked up where he left off in closing the Red Sox out in Game 3 of last year’s Wild Card Series, when he threw eight shutout innings. This time, he fired 6 1/3 innings of scoreless baseball, allowing two hits and one walk while punching out 10.

Rookie lefty Payton Tolle, making his first career postseason start, kept Boston in the game despite lacking Schlittler’s dominance. The Yankees touched him up for the first run of the game on a two-out RBI single by Austin Wells in the bottom of the second.

Tolle came out with two outs and nobody on in the fifth, and Tracy called on lefty Erik Miller, who struggled in September, to face the dangerous Ben Rice. The move didn’t work. Rice scorched Miller’s third pitch, a misplaced 96.8 mph sinker, over the wall in center for a solo shot to make it 2-0.

Schlittler owned the Red Sox early, allowing one hit and no walks over the first four innings while striking out eight and inducing 18 swings and misses.

To stave off elimination on Wednesday, the Red Sox will put the ball in the hands of trusted veteran starter Sonny Gray and hope the offense can have a revival against tough Yankees lefty Max Fried.