Red Sox fall to Astros in extras after stranding 13 men

Gabrielle Starr, Boston Herald on May 3, 2026

Published in Baseball

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BOSTON — The 2025 Boston Red Sox were a top-10 team in several offensive metrics, but the struggles to capitalize were always there. They were a bottom-10 team in runners left on base, and had the fourth-worst rate of Productive Out success despite having the most Productive Out opportunities of any American League team. No MLB team had more plate appearances with a runner on second base and zero outs, but only the Colorado Rockies had a worse rate of advancement.

The 2026 Red Sox are a more extreme version of their previous selves. They don’t excel at creating scoring opportunities, and they are markedly worse at converting runners into runs.

Sunday was a prime example: a game that went to extra innings tied 1-1 after the Red Sox went 0 for 10 with runners in scoring position and stranded 11 men on base in the first nine frames, and which they then lost 3-1 in 10 innings.

Hours earlier, it looked like Ranger Suarez was putting together another gem. His difficult Red Sox debut in Houston on March 30 looked miles behind him as he and the Astros rematched in the early innings of their season series finale.

The Astros tagged Suarez for four earned runs on seven hits, including two homers, on that night in late March and he lasted just 4 1/3 innings. But he looked locked in the second time around, blanking the Astros through four innings, working around one base runner each frame and throwing strikes at a near-66% rate. Suarez’s pitch count was 70 when he walked off the mound after the fourth.

But Suarez didn’t return for the fifth due to what the Red Sox later announced as “right hamstring tightness,” and it turned into another long game for the overworked Boston bullpen.

Tyler Samaniego recorded the first two outs of the fifth, but also left two runners behind for Greg Weissert. Weissert stranded the pair with an Isaac Paredes lineout to center, but he was unable to work out of a self-made jam in the sixth. Christian Walker and Jose Altuve began the sixth with a single and double, and Brice Matthews flew into sacrifice double-play, which tied the game.

Weissert’s 15th appearance of the season was the sixth in which he allowed at least one run and the fifth with one or more earned runs.

Having gone 2 for 9 with runners in scoring position and left 10 men on base in Saturday’s 6-3 loss, the Red Sox picked up where they left off. They had five baserunners in the first three innings, but didn’t score until Jarren Duran’s second home run of the series soared into the right-field seats just beyond the Pesky Pole in the bottom of the fifth. But unlike Friday’s game-winning three-run shot, the bases were empty when Duran homered Sunday, the 13th solo shot out of 23 total Red Sox home runs this season.

And Weissert gave up the game-tying run the next inning.

The ABS challenge system continues to be an issue, too. Home-plate umpire Laz Diaz muddled through nine ABS challenges on Sunday, but was spared even more by a Red Sox team that passed up multiple opportunities to overturn his missed calls. Marcelo Mayer was called out on a full-count curveball nowhere near the strike zone when he led off the bottom of the second. Ceddanne Rafaela, the next batter up, didn’t challenge a 1-0 four-seamer well outside the zone, which Diaz ruled a strike.

Perhaps wanting to make up for the previous at-bat, Rafaela called for a challenge while batting in the bottom of the fourth, but on a pitch firmly in the zone.

Inning after inning, the staring contest continued. Entering the ninth, each team had eight hits and three walks. The Astros had left nine men on base, the Red Sox 10. Aroldis Chapman worked around a leadoff single by 2018 World Series champion Christian Vázquez to pitch a scoreless top of the ninth.

In the bottom of the ninth, the Red Sox were gifted a chaotic chance. After two quick outs, Willson Contreras grounded the ball back to the mound. It looked like a surefire ticket to extra innings, but reliever Bryan Abreu committed two errors, fielding and then throwing the ball wide of first base. Contreras raced safely to first, and then advanced to second.

Extra innings came moments later, when Roman Anthony chopped a ball to first base. And things quickly turned dire in the 10th, when righty Zack Kelly loaded the bases on a walk to Paredes and bunt by Braden Shewmake. Altuve grounded into a double play that put two outs on the board and prevented a run, only for Kelly to issue a bases-reloading walk to Matthews and give up a two-run single to Cam Smith.

The Red Sox, too, loaded the bases in the 10th, but never scored. The Astros, who are 9-20 against other MLB teams this season, went 5-1 in the season series against the Sox.

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