Schwarber's HR not enough as Sox fall in 10

BOSTON -- Elation, then deflation.

That’s just how things are going for the Red Sox right now.

Kyle Schwarber’s clutch, game-tying homer with no outs in the bottom of the ninth was not enough, as Hansel Robles served up a two-run homer to Josh Donaldson to open the 10th and got belted around for five runs in the frame as the Twins came away with a 9-6 victory on Wednesday night at Fenway Park.

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From the moment Schwarber connected for his first Red Sox homer to when he ran around the bases and got back to the dugout, Fenway was electric.

“That was definitely a really cool moment,” said Schwarber. “Fenway was rocking. I was, in the moment, very excited, and kind of took it in rounding the bases, and was looking at the fans and everything like that. This is a great place to be.”

Almost unfathomably, things unraveled right after that.

With runners at the corners and one out after the Schwarber homer, the Red Sox just needed Alex Verdugo to hit a sacrifice fly, or maybe a well-placed ground ball, and the game would have been over and a walk-off pile would have ensued.

Instead, Verdugo struck out on three pitches against Twins closer Alex Colomé, who had struggled mightily to that point in the inning. Hunter Renfroe followed with a popout.

Verdugo swung through three cutters, the second of which wasn’t close to being a strike.

“Yeah, it came down to one of the things we’ve been preaching from the get-go, right? Put the ball in play with a man at third and less than two outs,” said manager Alex Cora. “We didn’t do that. Dugie has been swinging the bat well. Just, that situation, he chased two out of three pitches.”

No chasing was required for the Twins against Robles. They took the momentum right back when Donaldson clocked the second pitch of the 10th by Robles -- a 97.3-mph heater -- over Boston’s bullpen in right-center.

“It’s a crazy game,” said Schwarber. “This game, you can be at your highest high and then the next thing you know, it can put you right back down. But the beauty of this is we get to come out tomorrow. We get the opportunity to win the series. I think that’s the focus, that we’ve got to put this behind us.”

If the Red Sox could have pushed that winning run home in the ninth, the story of the night would have been Schwarber, who belted his 26th homer of 2021 a projected distance of 437 feet.

Instead, the focal point of the loss was a night full of missed opportunities by Boston’s offense and costly mistakes on the bases in the early innings.

The Sox left 12 runners on base. Some key cogs aren’t firing like they should be. J.D. Martinez is hitless in his last 15 at-bats. In his last 11 games, he has a .593 OPS. Xander Bogaerts is 1 for his last 14. Rafael Devers is getting pitched around, has only four hits in his last 30 at-bats and has been sitting on 29 homers since Aug. 14.

The hitting woes could have been overcome if only Boston had done a better job of running the bases in this one.

In the bottom of the third, Christian Vázquez thought there was only one out and had to be held at third on Schwarber’s soft single. If not for that mistake, he would have easily scored.

An inning later, Verdugo thought he hit the ball well enough to get it over the Green Monster, so he didn’t run out of the box. It would have been an easy double. Instead, Verdugo strayed too far off first after he realized his mistake and was thrown out as he retreated back to the base.

“It’s an area we’ve been bad,” said Cora. “We forgot the outs, we didn’t run out of the box. It’s probably a different game early on [if not for that]. Obviously they don’t want to do that, but like I’ve been saying, sometimes we’re not doing enough, pushing-wise, because it keeps happening.

“Yeah, it’s on them. It’s on us. As a group, we’re not doing a good job with that. Those things you can control -- know the outs, run out of the box. It’s one of those that we need to do, and at this stage, it’s tough to watch. We talk about it, but it keeps happening. As a staff, we’ve got to keep pushing, keep pushing. We can’t give up.”

Though the Red Sox are 17-20 since the All-Star break and a season-high 7 1/2 games behind the Rays in the American League East, they can still get to October if they can play cleaner baseball.

The Red Sox trail the Yankees by three games for the first Wild Card spot but lead the A’s by 1 1/2 games for the second berth. The A’s and Yankees start a four-game series in Oakland on Thursday, meaning the Red Sox will have a chance to gain ground on one of those teams all four days.