The part that should actually bother Red Sox fans is that Pittsburgh didn't even need its ace to do this.
The Pirates were supposed to start reigning Cy Young winner Paul Skenes on Sunday. Instead, with their own playoff hopes fading, they scratched him, pushed his start to Wednesday, and threw Lake Bachar out as an opener in a bullpen game. Bachar worked three innings. Kirby Yates, a guy with a losing record on the season, picked up the win. Boston still lost 8-3, dropping the series finale at PNC Park in front of just over 25,000 fans after a rain delay ate up the middle innings.
The final score matters less than who did the damage. Bryan Reynolds, Brandon Lowe, and Nick Yorke each drove in two runs, and Pittsburgh blew the game open with a five-run third inning. Boston's only real answer was Connor Wong's three-run homer in the fifth, which looked more like garbage-time damage control than a rally.
Patrick Sandoval's start fell apart fast: seven runs and nine hits in four innings, his shortest outing of the season. He was dealing with a blister on his foot that had him hopping through his delivery. Give him the benefit of the doubt on the injury. I won't extend that same grace to the broader pattern this loss fits into.
My gripe with this Red Sox team: they're outstanding against good teams and alarmingly bad against bad ones. Through this loss, Boston had lost seven of nine games and dropped three straight series to sub-.500 clubs, while running a perfect record against teams holding playoff spots since late June. A team that beats the contenders and loses to the bottom-feeders every time isn't playing great baseball, it's playing streaky, unreliable baseball, and that's a red flag heading into October.
There's context that should temper the panic a little. Adley Rutschman clearly isn't right at the plate yet as he works back from a wrist issue, and he said as much himself: "Just trying to stay with my process, not make any drastic changes." Masataka Yoshida landed on the injured list with a hamstring strain, and reliever Justin Slaten is out with elbow soreness. Roman Anthony, Trevor Story, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa are nearing rehab assignments, which is real help on the way. And Brandon Lowe has been a nightmare matchup for this team for years; his RBI hits in both Pittsburgh rallies fit a pattern that predates this series.
But none of that excuses losing a series to a team that entered the game well under .500, behind a fill-in starter running a bullpen game. If the Red Sox want to be taken seriously as a wild-card team down the stretch, they need to stop treating bad opponents like a trap game every single week. Right now, that's exactly what they are.
This loss doesn't sink Boston's season, not with the roster talent they have and reinforcements on the way. But if they can't figure out how to put away teams they're supposed to beat, all that good work against the contenders is going to get erased in a wild-card tiebreaker against a team that never had this problem.
