Until 38 minutes before their 4:10 p.m. first pitch on Saturday, the Red Sox had no lineup.

That was, Alex Cora explained during his pregame availability hours earlier, thanks to the Milwaukee Brewers, who’d made a pitching pivot that morning.

“We had to make an adjustment,” the Red Sox manager explained. ‘They’re going with the opener.”

Both teams had already submitted their starters, and it’s something of an unwritten rule that should a team decide to make an unnecessary change, they give their opponent a courtesy heads-up as early as possible.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” Cora said, though he admitted had his own reasons for not taking umbrage.

“In my situation, I’m the last guy that can complain about it, right, because I did what I did in the past,” he said, referring to his part in the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal and subsequent year-long suspension. “So, as far as baseball etiquette, whatever it’s called, I’m the last guy to complain about (expletive) like that.”

Unfortunately, the game itself did little to improve the mood. The Red Sox were no-hit for six innings and ultimately fell to the Brewers 6-3 to lose the series.

Nick Pivetta got the Brewers 1-2-3 in the top of the first, but it was all downhill from there. When Willy Adames led off the top of the second with a liner down the third-base side, the ball took a hop towards the stands, where a Red Sox fan reached out and made contact. Brewers manager Pat Murphy called for a review leading to a prolonged on-field delay. The replay review ultimately showed fan interference, giving Adames a ground-rule double, but Cora took issue with how long Murphy waited to call for the review, and had a lengthy discussion with the umpires. (The fan was asked to leave.)

The Brewers went on to load the bases, but Tyler O’Neill saved the inning with a leaping catch at the base of the Green Monster.

Pivetta wouldn’t be so lucky in the third. After getting two quick outs, the second of which was his 1,000th career strikeout, the righty found himself unable to get out of the inning. Back-to-back-to-back singles plated a trio of runs, and Joey Ortiz’s double drove in another pair. It took Pivetta 34 pitches to get through the inning, and once he did, the Brewers had a 5-0 lead.

The Red Sox starter’s day was over shortly thereafter. He issued a walk to Brewers leadoff man Brice Turang to begin the fourth, then got William Contreras to pop out. Though his starter was only at 77 pitches, Cora came out to make a change.

“Two outs and two strikes,” Cora said of the Brewers’ effective strategy against Pivetta. “He was one pitch away from getting out of it. He had to work for it today.”

Over 3 ⅓ innings, Pivetta gave up five earned runs on seven hits and three walks, and struck out three. Not including Sept. 2, 2022 – a dominant outing was cut short by a calf injury – it was his shortest start since July 10 of that year, when he’d been knocked around by the New York Yankees.

Boston’s bats, meanwhile, were hitless until the bottom of the seventh, and the top third of the lineup – Jarren Duran, Connor Wong, O’Neill (and Rob Refsnyder in the eighth) – went a combined 0-for-12.

O’Neill’s struggles at the plate continued. He entered the game having struck out in his previous seven at-bats dating back to May 21, then struck out looking in his first two times up. The streak ended at nine, with a flyout to shallow center that cemented six hitless innings for Boston. And when the Red Sox took the field for the top of the eighth, it was Refsnyder manning left, instead. The following inning, the club announced that O’Neill had been removed due to right-knee soreness. Both O’Neill and Cora described the situation as “day to day.”

“He didn’t feel great throughout,” Cora said. He didn’t believe it was related to O’Neill’s catch in the second, “just general soreness, part of the grind.”

For the first time since September 1958, the Red Sox faced the same starting pitcher (opener) in back-to-back games. Friday night’s encounter with opener Jared Koenig did little to help them on Saturday, though; the Brewers southpaw got the Red Sox 1-2-3 with two strikeouts in the first, then struck out Rafael Devers to begin the second. Only then did Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell make a pitching change.

The Red Sox went in order in the first two innings, with four strikeouts among the top six men in the lineup. Dom Smith and David Hamilton became Boston’s first baserunners of the day when they each drew a walk in the third, only to find themselves stranded. Smith also drew walks in the fifth and the ninth to set a career-high in walks, albeit with similarly fruitless results to his first time on base.

Finally, in the bottom of the seventh, Devers had seen enough. He blasted the first pitch he saw 400 feet to center, blowing the Brewers’ no-hit bid to smithereens with leadoff double. His 11th two-bagger of the season was also the 421st extra-base hit of his career, putting him one away from tying Jim Rice for the most by a Red Sox player before turning 28. (Devers will be 28 on Oct. 24.)

A moment later, the Milwaukees’ shutout bid died on the bat of Wilyer Abreu. His double down the first-base line to the right-field corner scored Devers, and Ceddanne Rafaela’s single brought Abreu around from second to cut Milwaukee’s lead to three.

But that would be all the Red Sox got. David Hamilton ground out to end the inning, and after Turang’s solo shot gave the Brewers back some breathing room, Boston went 1-2-3 again in the eighth.

It was deja vu in the ninth, when Devers led off with a single. Pinch-hitting for Abreu, Garrett Cooper worked a patient at-bat, only to be called out on the ninth pitch, which was firmly below the zone. Visibly frustrated, he returned to the dugout.

“Cooper put a great at-bat,” Cora said. “That was a bad pitch, that was a ball.”

Devers advanced to second on defensive indifference, and when Smith drew his third walk, the Brewers called for a two-out pitching change. Rafaela greeted Trevor Megill with an RBI single, scoring Devers to bring Boston within three once again.

They’d get no closer. Hamilton struck out to end the rally and the Red Sox dropped back down to .500. They’ve lost back-to-back series at home.

“Hung in there and that’s a positive, right?” Cora assessed. “But I think overall, I don’t want to say empty at-bats, you know, it was kind of like, a weird game.”

_______

©2024 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.