MILWAUKEE — Losses pile, compile, and compound. It is not yet June, but the Red Sox are playing like a team whose hopes for the 2025 season are at risk of collapsing.
On Tuesday night, the Sox nearly navigated a tightrope to victory, carrying a 1-0 lead into the ninth inning. But the club plummeted before the final step of the perilous traverse, suffering a 5-1, walkoff loss to the Brewers in 10 innings at American Family Field.
The contest marked the first time this year that the Sox lost when leading after eight innings. After starter Richard Fitts and four relievers held the Brewers scoreless, closer Aroldis Chapman gave up a game-tying run in the ninth for his first blown save of the year. One inning later, Liam Hendriks gave up a walkoff grand slam to Christian Yelich.
Sox players sat in stunned silence in the dugout as the exuberant Brewers danced with and doused each other on the field. Others slumped in the clubhouse under the growing anvil of a fourth straight defeat — a stretch in which the team has totaled just five runs while going 3-for-30 with no extra-base hits when hitting with men in scoring position.
“The margin for error, it’s hard to win games 1-0. We didn’t do a good job with [runners in scoring position],” manager Alex Cora said on a night when the Sox were 1-for-10 in such situations. “We know where we’re at. We’re not winning games, but are we playing bad baseball? I don’t know. That’s for others to tell us. I think we’re doing some good things. We need to be better in other [respects]. Offensively, we have to pick it up.”
GAME OVER 🚨
CHRISTIAN YELICH
WALK-OFF GRAND SLAM pic.twitter.com/KHi9jfEN4H— MLB (@MLB) May 28, 2025
The Sox were kept in the game by standout work from their own staff — and despite another bag of nothing from their lineup. Brewers starter and Northeastern alumnus Aaron Civale shut out the Sox through five innings — running the streak of scoreless innings by opposing starters to 21 over four games.
Finally, in the sixth, the Sox broke through. Ceddanne Rafaela led off the inning with a double off Civale on a two-strike pitch, and the Brewers went to their bullpen.
Lefty reliever Aaron Ashby entered and struck out Jarren Duran on a nasty slider. But in a critical at-bat, Rafael Devers managed to hit a slider off his shoe tops and hook a ground ball to the right side of the infield, allowing Rafaela to advance to third with two outs.
The additional 90 feet proved pivotal, as Rafaela scampered home when Ashby’s sinker sailed up and in against Carlos Narváez and off the glove of Brewers catcher William Contreras. The wild pitch put the Red Sox ahead, 1-0, and nearly proved enough.
Fitts — who’d initially been scheduled to make a second rehab start for Triple A Worcester on Tuesday in his return from a pectoral strain, but convinced the Sox to let him pitch in Milwaukee — logged three scoreless innings, humming 95-97-mile-per-hour fastballs.
“I was happy with my velo. It felt easy,” said Fitts.
Brennan Bernardino (1 inning), Greg Weissert, Justin Wilson, and Justin Slaten (1⅓ innings each) then combined for five scoreless frames, leading Cora to summon Chapman. But the Sox closer, who’d been 8-for-8 in save opportunities, faltered.
The ninth-inning rally was set in motion when Yelich fought off a 100 m.p.h. sinker on the hands to cue an opposite-field, leadoff double down the left-field line. Yelich swiped third as Chapman issued a walk to Rhys Hoskins. After a fly out, Lexington native Sal Frelick lined a game-tying single to center that sent the game into extras.
“I take this loss personally,” Chapman said through a translator. “We needed this win.”
The Sox were still well positioned to get it in the 10th after Abraham Toro led off the inning with an infield single that allowed Zombie runner Trevor Story to advance to third. But the Sox failed to capitalize, as both Rafaela and Duran struck out, and Devers lined out to left.
“It’s not like we don’t want to move the runner or bring him in,” Rafaela said of an offense that is striking out 24 percent of the time with runners in scoring position, the seventh-highest rate in baseball. “We do our best. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t.”
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With Milwaukee benefiting from a Zombie runner in the bottom of the inning, a leadoff single against Hendriks put runners on the corners and a walk loaded the bases. After a flyout to shallow center left the runners unable to advance, Yelich crushed a cement mixer of a slider for the former MVP’s first career walkoff homer.
For the third time this year, the Sox have lost four straight games. They’re 27-30, in fourth place in the AL East, and sinking quickly.
“Letting the entire group down, that stings for me a lot,” said Hendriks. “We can keep saying it’s early, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to figure some things out. But with the guys in here, one game doesn’t change anything for the rest of the season. We just need to make sure we show up tomorrow with a clean slate.”
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