Red Sox held to three hits, drop series to Rangers

Gabrielle Starr, Boston Herald on Sep 16, 2026

Published in Baseball

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The limp to October goes on for the Boston Red Sox, who blew an early 2-0 lead over the Rangers and dropped their series in Texas with a 7-3 loss Wednesday night.

Boston batters managed just three hits in the contest, their runs coming via Willson Contreras’ first-inning two-run homer and Caleb Durbin scoring on a balk in the fifth.

Early on, it looked like both teams’ starting pitchers were not going to last long.

Rangers lefty MacKenzie Gore began Wednesday’s game with a four-pitch walk, three of which were nowhere near the zone, to Red Sox leadoff man Roman Anthony, and gave up Contreras’ team-leading 27th homer.

Sox rookie southpaw Jake Bennett labored through a 26-pitch bottom of the first in which he faced six batters and gave up a run.

But after a second-inning delay in which it seemed like Gore was about to depart, he completed four innings. Bennett went 4 2/3. Both starters allowed three earned runs, though Gore only yielded two hits to Bennett’s eight.

The Red Sox retook the lead on Jakob Junis’ fifth-inning balk. It evaporated one pitch into Greg Weissert’s appearance when he took over for Bennett in the bottom of the inning.

A three-run blowup by Erik Miller in the seventh was the unnecessary coup de grâce for a Red Sox team struggling to do so much as collect a hit, much less score a run. It marked Miller’s worst outing of the season, with Boston or San Francisco.

2018 World Series hero Nathan Eovaldi closed out the win with four shutout innings against his former team.

To add insult to the injury of Boston’s decision not to re-sign Eovaldi following the 2022 season, his 46 wins since 2023 are tied for second-most among all American League pitchers in that span.

The Red Sox have lost five of their last seven games since their five-game win streak. They are 10-11 in their last 20 games, and 82-70 overall.

Their magic number is five. But there is little magical about them lately.