August 2, 2023: Red Sox start late-season fade with loss to Mariners

Boston’s Kutter Crawford works to Seattle’s J.P. Crawford in the bottom of the first inning on August 2, 2023, at T-Mobile Park in Seattle.

The Boston Red Sox passed the August 1, 2023, trade deadline1 with a lack of action that some fans found frustrating. After winning 15 of its 23 games in July, the team ended the month with a 56-50 record, 9 games behind the first-place Baltimore Orioles and in contention for a wild-card playoff spot. But the team’s only action at the deadline was to pick up infielder Luis Urías, who had been playing at Triple A in the Milwaukee Brewers organization.2

From August 1 through the end of the season, the Red Sox went 22-34 and fell into last place in the American League East Division. The team lost five of its first seven games after the trade deadline, providing quick fodder to critics of its sit-on-your-hands strategy.3 One of the first indications that the Red Sox weren’t built to compete came in an August 2 road game against the Seattle Mariners, in which the Red Sox wasted a good pitching start and an early lead in an eventual 6-3 loss.

In their six-game season series, the 2023 Red Sox and Mariners were – on paper – as evenly matched as two teams could be. Each team won three games and scored 33 runs against the other.

Seattle began play on August 2 with a 55-52 record, in fourth place in the AL West Division, 6 games behind the first-place Texas Rangers. Like the Red Sox, the Mariners had been hot in July, winning 17 of 26 games. The team was also trying to build a playoff tradition, having reached the postseason in 2022 for the first time in 21 seasons.4 The Red Sox, in contrast, had missed the playoffs in three of four seasons since winning the World Series in 2018.5

The Red Sox started righty Kutter Crawford, 27 years old and in his second full big-league season.6 He entered the game with a 5-5 record and a 3.86 ERA and was making his first appearance of 2023 against Seattle. Crawford had won three of his previous five games, including his most recent start, against the San Francisco Giants on July 28.

The Mariners started 26-year-old righty Logan Gilbert, sporting a 9-5 record and a 3.83 ERA in his third full season. Gilbert had won four of his previous five starts, including a complete-game shutout against San Francisco on the Fourth of July. He hadn’t pitched against Boston in 2023.

A crowd of 37,942 turned out on a gorgeous, sunny Wednesday afternoon. The first two innings passed with some loud contact but no hits, as Seattle’s J.P. Crawford and Boston’s Jarren Duran, Rafael Devers, and Alex Verdugo all hit deep flies or liners to the outfield.

Boston was first to translate contact into runs. Connor Wong led off the third with a walk. After another solidly hit fly out by Yu Chang, rookie Duran drove Gilbert’s third straight split-finger fastball into the right-field seats for his seventh home run of the year and a 2-0 lead.7 It was one of 29 homers Gilbert surrendered in 2023, fifth-most in the AL. Seattle collected a single and a walk in the third and another single in the fourth, without crossing the plate.

Jarren Duran crosses home plate after his third-inning home run. Also visible from left are Boston’s Connor Wong, Seattle catcher Tom Murphy, a cameraman, and home-plate umpire D.J. Reyburn.

Wong led off again in the top of the fifth. Again he stirred up a rally, this time by grounding a double into left field. Chang’s single moved him to third. Duran and Verdugo struck out, but Masataka Yoshida – an offseason pickup from Japan on a five-year, $90 million contract8 – grounded a single to deep short that scored Wong for a 3-0 Red Sox lead. Seattle collected two more singles in the bottom half, stranding the runners at first and second.

Boston manager Alex Cora pulled Kutter Crawford after five innings of four-hit, shutout ball, as the pitcher had worked through the Seattle lineup twice.9 In came righty John Schreiber, whose strong performance in high-stakes situations in 2022 had led the Red Sox radio broadcast team to nickname him “Johnny Leverage.”10

Schreiber began his stint on the mound by striking out fan favorite Julio Rodríguez, already a two-time All-Star at age 22. Eugenio Suárez followed with another grounded double into left field. Designated hitter Cal Raleigh worked Schreiber for a 10-pitch at-bat before poling his 17th home run into the right-field seats, not tremendously far from the spot of Duran’s homer, to bring Seattle within 3-2.

Righty Matt Brash replaced Gilbert for the seventh inning, striking out Wong and Chang and getting Duran to ground to second base.

Schreiber returned for the bottom half but ran into trouble against the bottom third of the Seattle lineup. Rookie Dominic Canzone, playing his second game as a Mariner following a July 31 trade from the Arizona Diamondbacks, led off with a walk.11 When Tom Murphy singled to left field, Cora pulled Schreiber in favor of lefty Richard Bleier.

Mariners manager Scott Servais sent rookie Cade Marlowe to hit for light-hitting second baseman Dylan Moore, whose 0-for-2 day had dropped his average to .167. In his first major-league pinch-hit at-bat, Marlowe won the lefty-against-lefty matchup, grounding a single past second base on a 1-and-2 count to score Canzone and tie the game. José Caballero ran for Marlowe.

An unusual play pulled Seattle ahead 4-3 as Rodríguez hit a broken-bat grounder between shortstop and third. The head of his bat flew into the infield, apparently distracting third baseman Devers and shortstop Chang, who collided as Rodríguez legged out a single and Murphy scored. “We both went for the ball but we didn’t communicate well enough,” Devers said after the game.12

Suárez’s opposite-field single into right field brought home Caballero for a 5-3 lead. One out later, Mauricio Llovera, acquired from San Francisco on July 26, came on to pitch his third game for the Red Sox. On a 2-and-2 count to Ty France, the Mariners pulled off a double steal. Suárez broke for second; when Wong made a poor throw there,13 Rodríguez broke from third and beat the return throw home, electrifying the Seattle fans and giving the Mariners a 6-3 lead.

The rally effectively ended the game. Devers hit a solid single with two out in the Red Sox eighth, but Adam Duvall’s grounder to third ended the inning. In the ninth, the Mariners brought in righty Andrés Muñoz, who had become the team’s closer after the Mariners traded Paul Sewald to Arizona in the deal that brought Canzone to Seattle. Muñoz retired Triston Casas on a harmless fly to left, then struck out pinch-hitter Reese McGuire14 and Wong to end the game in 2 hours and 49 minutes. Brash got the win, Schreiber took the loss, and Muñoz earned the save.

The Red Sox went 13-15 in August and only 9-19 in September and October, as spotty fielding and inconsistent pitching continued to plague the team.15 The Red Sox fired chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom in the middle of September.16 The Mariners, meanwhile, followed a torrid 21-6 August record by going 12-17 in September and October. The team was eliminated from a wild-card spot on the second-to-last day of the season through the combination of a 6-1 loss to Texas and a 1-0 Houston Astros win over the Diamondbacks.17

Mariners players celebrate the win. 

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credits

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data and the box scores for this game. He also reviewed video highlights of the game on MLB.com.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SEA/SEA202308020.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2023/B08020SEA2023.htm

https://www.mlb.com/mariners/video/red-sox-vs-mariners-highlights-x8927

The author attended the game and took the accompanying photos.

Notes

1 The trade deadline is the last point in the season at which players on 40-man rosters can be traded for each other. Players can be waived or claimed after that time, but not traded. In 2023 the trade deadline was 6 P.M. Eastern time on August 1. “Everything You Need to Know About the 2023 Trade Deadline,” MLB.com, August 1, 2023, https://www.mlb.com/news/when-is-trade-deadline-2023-date-time-and-news.

2 Greg McKenna and Emma Healy, “The Trade Deadline Has Come and Gone, and the Red Sox Made a Minor Addition. Here’s How It All Unfolded,” BostonGlobe.com, posted August 1, 2023. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/28/sports/mlb-trade-deadline-live-tracker/.

3 Alex Speier, “Did Trade Deadline Disappointment Lead to an August Slump? The Red Sox Deny It, but the Results Are Clear,” BostonGlobe.com, August 9, 2023, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/08/09/sports/red-sox-deny-deadline-disappointment-has-led-august-slump/.

4 The 2022 Mariners went 90-72 and swept the Toronto Blue Jays in the AL wild-card series before being swept by the Houston Astros in the AL Division Series.

5 The 2021 Red Sox won the AL wild-card play-in game and the AL Division Series before falling to the Houston Astros in the AL Championship Series.

6 Crawford pitched in a single game for Boston in 2021, then pitched in 21 games in 2022 (exceeding rookie limits) and 31 games in 2023.

7 Michael Chavez, “Mariners Rally Late to Take Series Against Red Sox,” SeattleTimes.com, August 2, 2023, www.seattletimes.com/sports/mariners/mariners-rally-late-to-take-series-over-red-sox/.

8 Alex Speier, “Victimized by Masataka Yoshida in Japan, Scott McGough Isn’t Surprised One Bit by the Red Sox Outfielder’s Success,” BostonGlobe.com, May 27, 2023, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/27/sports/victimized-by-masataka-yoshida-japan-scott-mcgough-isnt-surprised-one-bit-by-red-sox-outfielders-success/.

9 Julian McWilliams, “Spotted a 3-Run Lead Against the Mariners, the Red Sox Bullpen Came Unglued in Loss,” BostonGlobe.com, August 2, 2023, www.bostonglobe.com/2023/08/02/sports/spotted-3-run-lead-against-mariners-red-sox-bullpen-came-unglued/.

10 The nickname appears to be unique to the Red Sox radio team: It was not posted on Schreiber’s Baseball-Reference page as of October 2023, and a search of Boston Globe archives in October 2023 found no indication that the city’s largest newspaper had used it in print. A derisive reference to the nickname can be found in an August 2023 game thread on the Sons of Sam Horn Red Sox fan site. “8/26/23 – LAD @SOX,” SonsofSamHorn.net, August 26, 2023, https://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/8-26-23-lad-sox-fight-back.40308/page-11.

11 Full terms of the trade: Paul Sewald to Arizona; Canzone, Josh Rojas, and Ryan Bliss to Seattle.

12 McWilliams, “Spotted a 3-Run Lead Against the Mariners, the Red Sox Bullpen Came Unglued in Loss.”

13 McWilliams.

14 McGuire was hitting for second baseman Christian Arroyo, who went 0-for-3 in the game. Two days later, the Red Sox designated Arroyo for assignment to make room for newly acquired infielder Urías. Alex Speier, “Red Sox Designate Christian Arroyo for Assignment, Call Up Luis Urías,” BostonGlobe.com, August 4, 2023. www.bostonglobe.com/2023/08/04/sports/christian-arroyo-dfa/.

15 The Red Sox tied with the Detroit Tigers for the worst team fielding percentage in the AL at .982, and also tied with the Oakland Athletics for most errors in the league, with 102. Boston’s starting pitchers struggled: Only 29 percent of the team’s starts were quality starts (at least six innings pitched, three earned runs or fewer), ranking the Red Sox 12th among 15 AL teams. As a whole, Boston’s pitching staff ranked in the top three or four AL teams for hits and home runs surrendered, and their team ERA of 4.52 was worse than the league average of 4.28.

16 Peter Abraham, “Red Sox Fire Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom and Will Go in ‘A New Direction,’” BostonGlobe.com, September 14, 2023, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/09/14/sports/chaim-bloom-fired-red-sox/.

17 Ryan Divish, “Mariners Fall to Rangers and Watch Astros Eliminate Them from Playoffs,” SeattleTimes.com, September 30, 2023, https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/mariners/mariners-fall-to-rangers-wait-to-see-if-they-live-another-day/.