BOSTON — It’s long been assumed that the Red Sox are headed for a rematch with the New York Yankees in next week’s American League Wild Card Series, and to be sure, that is still the most likely outcome by far.

But it isn’t 100% locked in, and with Thursday’s lifeless 1-0 loss to the Cleveland Guardians a path remains for the Red Sox to slip to the No. 6 seed and a date with the American League West champion instead.

For that to happen the Red Sox would have to get swept by the Chicago Cubs in their final series, the Chicago White Sox would have to sweep their finale against the Colorado Rockies and the Guardians would have to take two out of three against the Kansas City Royals.

If all that transpired, the White Sox would win the AL Central and the Guardians would take the second wild-card spot from Boston, winning the tiebreaker by virtue of their superior record within their own division.

How did it come to this? Thursday was a perfect microcosm of the Red Sox’s recent struggles.

Throughout their summer surge the Red Sox had no problem scoring runs, ranking as MLB’s top offense for nearly two months between June 25 and Aug. 22. But since then Boston’s lineup has cooled off significantly, and lately the club has reverted back to its early season malaise where the lineup often struggled to scratch more than a couple of runs across any given night.

The problem isn’t hard to spot, as the Red Sox have been abysmal hitting with runners in scoring position.

Since the start of the last road trip in Texas, the Red Sox scored 18 runs total over their last eight games entering Thursday, good for 2.2 runs per night with no more than four runs in any one game. During that stretch, the Red Sox collectively batted .218 as a team, but with runners in scoring position they were only 5 for 61, which equates to a ghastly .081 average.

The Red Sox aren’t going anywhere in October if they can’t get that straightened out, and they couldn’t find any answers on Thursday.

Boston managed only two hits throughout the entirety of Thursday’s shutout loss, getting a two-out single from Nick Sogard in the third along with another two-out single by Jarren Duran in the seventh. The Red Sox also drew four walks and had their best scoring opportunity in the fifth, when Ceddanne Rafaela reached on a leadoff error and advanced to second on a wild pitch.

The Red Sox went down in quick succession afterward and couldn’t get him in.

Meanwhile, Ranger Suarez pitched brilliantly to keep the Red Sox in the game, but the left-hander got incredibly unlucky in the second inning when Angel Martinez hit a fly ball down the right-field line that landed just inside Pesky’s Pole for a solo home run. The homer was measured at only 319 feet and, according to Statcast, wouldn’t have been out at any of the other 29 MLB ballparks.

Cleveland couldn’t touch Suarez otherwise, and he finished his final outing of the regular season with one run allowed over five innings on three hits, a walk and five strikeouts.

Suarez wraps up his first season in Boston with a 3.22 ERA and 140 strikeouts over 148 1/3 innings.

After Patrick Sandoval threw a scoreless sixth, Erik Miller came on for the seventh and enjoyed an encouraging bounce back performance following a string of stinkers. Having allowed six earned runs on five hits and six walks over 3 1/3 innings in his last four appearances, Miller looked much more dialed in, sending the Guardians down 1-2-3 with a strikeout and two fly outs while throwing seven of his eight pitches for strikes.

Raymond Burgos pitched two scoreless innings to keep it 1-0 Cleveland heading to the bottom of the ninth, but Guardians closer Cade Smith sent the Red Sox down 1-2-3 to officially punch his team’s ticket to the postseason.

The Red Sox don’t have long to snap out of their recent funk. With a nor’easter coming the club will play a double header against the Cubs on Friday before figuring out how and where to play their season finale over the weekend.

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