ST. PETERSBURG -- The Red Sox had already lost this four-game series to the Rays before they showed up at Tropicana Field on Thursday. But a getaway win on the way to New York could have been a nice momentum-shifter heading into the final series before the All-Star break.

Instead, yet another crushing loss found a team that is 5-12 since June 27.

• Box score

This time, with nine outs to go and up by three runs, the Red Sox were upended by the Rays’ five-run seventh and lost, 5-4.

Swept out of The Trop in a four-game series for the first time since the Rays’ inception in 1998, the Red Sox had a late-night flight looming and an upcoming series against the 62-27 Yankees.

Happy flight? Doubtful. But it was no time for Boston to feel sorry for itself, either.

“We’ll be OK,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “We played some good baseball today, we put up good at-bats, we battled. I know we lost, but compared to yesterday and the last few days, tonight was a better effort. We played some clean baseball, we made pitches; obviously one bad inning, but overall it was a better effort than yesterday.”

That one inning just happened to be very bad. So what happened?

Cora ‘rolled dice’ with Crawford
Righty Kutter Crawford, making another spot start for a rotation that is finally about to get healthy, was simply marvelous over the first six innings.

The rookie had a three-hit shutout after six, allowing three hits and no walks to go with six strikeouts.

Given that this was Crawford’s first six-inning stint of the season, it wouldn’t have been surprising if Cora had lifted him at that point.

Then again, Crawford had retired 10 in a row leading into that seventh, so it was hardly outrageous for Cora to stay with him.

“Where we were bullpen-wise, we were a little limited and he was throwing the ball well, so we rolled the dice with him,” Cora said.

Here’s what happened after the roll of the dice. Jonathan Aranda belted a ground-rule double. Christian Bethancourt followed with a single up the middle. And Josh Lowe came through with an RBI double to make it 3-1. Crawford’s night was over.

“The two-strike curveball to Aranda, I didn’t get it down, I was trying to bounce it,” said Crawford. “Bethancourt, tried going up and in to him and didn’t quite get it there, and he got enough of it to get up the middle. I thought I made a decent pitch to [Lowe] right there, but he was able to get enough to hook it down the line. Just some mislocated pitches.”

Schreiber finally has a letdown
Even as Crawford walked off the mound with runners on second and third and nobody out, the Red Sox hardly seemed in dire straits. They were up by two runs and had their hottest relief pitcher coming on in hopes of getting Crawford off the hook.

John Schreiber walked onto the mound with a 0.60 ERA. The side-winding righty hadn’t allowed a run in 19 straight outings, holding the opposition to a .107 average and a .336 OPS.

That streak came to a crashing halt. Taylor Walls hit Schreiber’s fourth pitch, an 0-2, 95.7 mph fastball, for a game-tying two-run single to left.

Then, there was a bad break. Schreiber slipped on the mound and hit Luke Raley with a pitch.

“Just a huge hole in the landing spot, just rolled my ankle over there a little bit. Unlucky,” Schreiber said.

After Brett Phillips laid down a sacrifice bunt, Schreiber yielded a two-run single to Yandy Díaz, who had six RBIs in the series.

“Díaz, just a high hop with the infield in; that’s baseball,” Schreiber said. “Everything felt good, but I can’t be perfect. Obviously we wanted to get this one tonight, but Kutter threw the ball really, really well, and we put up a few runs to put us in the lead there. Just forget about it, go about it tomorrow.”

Shake it off, get healthy
At 47-43, the Red Sox are getting healthier. Chris Sale returned on Tuesday. Nathan Eovaldi and Garrett Whitlock are expected to be activated Friday. Trevor Story could be back from a right hand injury on Saturday.

As tough as things have been of late, the Sox are tied with the Blue Jays for the third American League Wild Card spot and 2 1/2 games behind the Rays for the top spot.

“Just keep grinding,” Crawford said. “We’re pretty banged up right now. We’ve just got to grind and keep battling, and things will start going our way.”