ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A long, strange 2026 Boston Red Sox regular season came to a fittingly unusual end Sunday afternoon, with a 6-2 loss to the Chicago Cubs.

At Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Boston and Chicago ball clubs flew south late Friday night, after the Red Sox swept their split-doubleheader at Fenway Park, to escape the nor’easter that drenched the eastern seaboard over the course of the rest of the weekend.

With the Red Sox temporarily installed as the home team for their final game, the Trop did its best Fenway impression. The team’s usual home hype video rolled on the boards pregame. Red Sox players’ walk-up songs blared as they came to bat. “Sweet Caroline” played midway through the eighth inning, as it would in Boston.

Despite the short notice, it was an extremely well-attended game; the 20,411 paid attendance was nearly 3,000 above the Rays’ average this year, and higher than 58 of 81 their home games.

Tanner Houck’s long road back from August 2025 Tommy John surgery brought him to the unexpected port of call for his first big-league game since May of last year.

The Red Sox righty pitched the first three innings, and allowed three earned runs on four hits, with one strikeout and no walks. All three runs came courtesy of 2025 teammate Alex Bregman who put the Cubs up 2-0 with a home run in the first inning, then took him deep again in the third.

Even with facial fractures from a foul ball last weekend, Bregman was the most productive player in the game. He went 4 for 4 with a walk, two homers, a double, three runs and four RBI. His second homer of the game was his 28th of the year, and ensured he would finish the regular season with more home runs than any member of the Red Sox. (Willson Contreras led the roster with a career-high 27.)

Houck threw 50 pitches, 34 for strikes. He is a candidate to join the Boston bullpen for the wild-card round, particularly with the unexpected loss of righty reliever Tyron Guerrero to the injured list Sunday morning.

“Obviously, Bregman got us today,” Red Sox manager Chad Tracy told reporters postgame. “But good to see (Houck) back out there. And being the first time in 15 months, I thought he looked pretty good.”

Sunday’s season finale had a way-station quality to it, as the two playoff teams ran out the clock before moving on to their first-round sites. Several stars were subbed out early, including soon-to-be National League MVP Pete Crow-Armstrong, replaced by pinch-runner Tyrone Taylor after a single to begin the game, and Contreras, who returned to the lineup for the first time since taking a pitch to the hand on Sept. 17; Jahmai Jones replaced him as designated hitter in the bottom of the fifth.

“We’re just getting guys off their feet,” Tracy said.

Even with Chicago tallying 13 hits to Boston’s five, the game blazed by, the eighth inning well under way by the time it reached the two-hour mark. Red Sox runs came courtesy of Adley Rutschman’s solo home run in the first, and Andruw Monasterio’s game-tying RBI force-out in the second.

It slowed when Patrick Sandoval could not finish the top of the ninth. The left-hander followed Wyatt Olds’ 2/3 innings with a largely unyielding 4 2/3 frames. But a 10-pitch at-bat and leadoff single by Miguel Amaya spelled trouble.

Taylor followed with a single to put runners on the corners, and Bregman’s fourth hit, an RBI double, pushed the Cubs’ lead to 4-2. Gabriel Arias’ sacrifice fly plated another run and prompted a pitching change the Red Sox would have preferred to avoid.

Left-hander Jovani Morán struck out Ian Happ before giving up an RBI double to Michael Conforto, scoring Bregman, and issuing a walk to Massachusetts native Matt Shaw.

Boston was spared further damage by soon-to-be three-peat Gold Glove right-fielder Wilyer Abreu, who turned Pedro Ramirez’s single into an inning-ending throw home.

The Red Sox finish the regular season 87-75, and are on to a wild-card rematch at Yankee Stadium.

“Our guys are going to be ready,” Tracy said, “I know that.”

____

©2026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.