Gasper places order for new bats in hopes to break Red Sox's drought

ST. PETERSBURG -- A late-inning comeback victory is going to happen for the Red Sox at some point. It has to, right?

You had the feeling it just might on Tuesday night. In the top of the eighth inning at Tropicana Field, Marcelo Mayer had the fortune of hitting a two-run double off the first-base bag that trimmed a three-run deficit to one.

Jarren Duran moved Mayer -- the potential tying run -- to third with one out. But two groundouts later, one off the bat of Ceddanne Rafaela and the other from Wilyer Abreu, Boston was left with an all-too-familiar feeling. An attempted comeback fell short in a 4-3 defeat to the Rays that dropped Boston’s record to 1-32 when trailing after seven innings and 0-35 when down after eight.

“It's incredibly frustrating,” said Red Sox catcher Mickey Gasper. “We're all trying to help the team win, and we're knocking at the door every night. We're coming up a little short right now, and the only thing you can do is look in the mirror and say, ‘How do I help the team?’ And if 26 guys do that, that gets you in a good spot.”

But everyone would acknowledge the Red Sox are not in a good spot at the moment. In fact, they are as many as 11 games under .500 (27-38) for the first time since the end of the 2020 season.

Gasper had two near-misses in this one, the first a drive to right in the fifth that looked like it would at least be a double until right fielder Austin Slater made a tremendous lunging catch.

In the seventh, Gasper ripped one high and deep to right, but it landed in Slater’s glove – just in front of the wall. Per Statcast, it would have been a home run in 16 of MLB’s 30 ballparks.

"I just wanted to help the team there, and felt like I had a good game plan against [Nick] Martinez, and I felt like I executed,” said Gasper. “I hit the ball hard, and it only matters if it finds grass, and I wasn't able to do that tonight.”

It was to the point that Gasper was second-guessing his lumber.

“I thought I got them both. Honestly. I just put in a bat order with [clubhouse manager] Tommy [McLaughlin], because I'm pretty frustrated with what I got,” said Gasper. “The first one, I felt a hair on the bottom of the barrel, but I knew I spun it right. I've seen that ball go out before, and then the second one, I really thought that was going over the fence.”

The offensive resurgence that marked the final couple of weeks of May has disappeared through the early part of June.

In their first seven games of the month, the Sox have slashed .218/.252/.354 with five homers while scoring just 3.14 runs per game. They’ve walked only nine times, compared to 48 strikeouts, going 2-5.

Rafaela hoped to move things in a different direction when he came up with Marcelo Mayer on third and one out in the eighth inning in the most pivotal at-bat of the night for the Sox.

But his 105.5 mph hot shot, which had an expected batting average of .510, was right at second baseman Richie Palacios, who was drawn-in to cut down the potential tying run. Mayer had to hold at third.

Maybe Rafaela was just a victim of bad aim.

“You don't control those things. You just want to barrel the ball and hope that does the job,” Rafaela said. “I was trying to hit the ball in the air. My approach was through the middle but in the air so I can bring in the run. That was the plan.”

The road had recently been a place of fortune for the Red Sox, but they are 1-3 heading into Wednesday afternoon’s finale of this five-game road trip.

The journey to face the two American League East heavyweights (Yankees and Rays) started auspiciously, with the Sox pulling off a 5-3 win in the Bronx on Friday night.

Starting with a rainout on Saturday, Boston’s momentum has completely stalled, as interim manager Chad Tracy’s squad has scored an aggregate five runs over the last three games.

“We hit some balls hard, quite a few actually, for outs,” said Tracy. “But like we were doing before this past week, we have to create more opportunities for ourselves throughout the game.”