As cold front hits Fenway Park, Red Sox’s bats are freezing up
"We got to be better. It starts with me. I got to be better.”
The 2025 Red Sox are yearning for the opportunity to play in chilly October weather in the coming months.
But sub-40 degree temps? That’s a different story, especially in the early weeks of a new baseball season.
After Tuesday’s 6-1 loss to the Blue Jays featured first-pitch temps at 35 degrees — the third coldest on record for a Red Sox home game, according to Baseball Reference — Wednesday’s rematch against Toronto was a welcome … 46 degrees at first pitch.
And in a fitting theme with the miserable weather currently befalling the Commonwealth, the Red Sox’s once-potent offense at Fenway Park has now completely frozen over.
“Yeah, there’s no excuses,” Alex Bregman said of the weather after Wednesday’s 2-1 loss to Toronto in 11 innings. “Both teams have to do it. So we got to be better. It starts with me. I got to be better.”
After scoring 44 runs over a four-game span from April 3-6, the Red Sox have now scored four total runs over their first three games against the Blue Jays on their homestand — unsurprisingly dropping all three matchups as a result.
While Toronto starter Kevin Gausman was stellar on the mound (8 IP, 4 H, 10 SO), the Red Sox also didn’t exactly put themselves in favorable positions to extend at-bats or put the ball in play.
Boston’s four hits marked the fewest they’ve collected in a game since getting one-hit by the Rays on Sept. 19, 2024 — with the team now batting just 2-for-29 (0.68) with runners in scoring position over this three-game slide.
“A lot of strikeouts,” a candid Alex Cora said when asked his thoughts of Boston’s offensive approach, with Boston fanning 14 times in Wednesday’s loss.
When Boston wasn’t going down on strikes, its bats were making life easy for Gausman and the Blue Jays’ pitching corps. It only took Gausman and Toronto reliever Jeff Hoffman five pitches each to get through the seventh and ninth innings, respectively.
“I think some of those guys — you don’t want to let them get to two strikes, because they got some pretty good wipeout stuff,” Bregman said of Toronto’s pitching staff. “So sometimes you’re going to try and attack early. Obviously it didn’t work out tonight, but we’ll get a new game plan tomorrow and come back at them.”
“Obviously, I think they’ve made some good pitches against us, but obviously we haven’t put together the same quality of at-bat,” he added. “Just look forward to tomorrow and trying to do that.”
Boston’s quiet night at the plate also spoiled an encouraging start from Tanner Houck — who limited Toronto to just five hits and a single run over 6.2 innings of work. After allowing three hits and that lone run in the first inning, he did not allow a hit over the next 15 batters he faced.
“I mean, I trust them wholeheartedly,” Houck said of Boston’s bats waking up. “I know that they work really hard and they show up. They put every ounce of their heart and soul into it and that’s all I can ever ask for them. I know that things can turn around very quickly.”
The Blue Jays have enjoyed their time at Fenway over the last few seasons — winning seven of their last nine matchups in Boston’s ballpark.
Triston Casas — batting just .163 on the year — is looking forward to more matchups against the Blue Jays moving forward, starting with Thursday’s matchup between Walker Buehler and Chris Bassitt.
“It’s good that we’re going to see them a lot, because we needed these at-bats,” Casas said. “We needed to fail, because we’re going to make the adjustments, come out next time and be a little bit better.”
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