The Red Sox fought back from a 5-1 deficit to tie the game in the eighth inning, but reliever Alex Wilson could only keep the Mets off the board for one batter, allowing a game winning home run to Lucas Duda in the bottom of the inning.
With Jon Lester missing his start with the flu, it didn’t take long for the Sox to find themselves in a hole on Sunday:
The Mets went to work in the second when Carlos Beltran and Jason Bay led the inning off with a pair of singles. Bowden retired the next two batters, but couldn’t get Daniel Murphy, and cut off a throw from Josh Reddick that could have had the runner at the plate. Instead, Murphy managed to get in a run down long enough that both Beltran and Bay managed to score.
Coming in to try and stop the bleeding, Andrew Miller fared no better:
His fastball was flat, and going anywhere but where he wanted it to. Angel Pagan hit a leadoff double, Jason Bay followed it up with an RBI single, and Ike Davis sealed the deal with a two-run homer.
Still, the Red Sox weren’t going to go out lying down. Starting in the third inning, the Sox went to work with the long ball:
The Red Sox had already started chipping away in the top of the inning, though, with a solo homer from Juan Carlos Linares. They tacked on another when Jed Lowrie came in the back door on a Lars Anderson ground out in the fourth, and yet another or Tim Federowicz’ solo shot in the seventh. Finally, with Hideki Okajima and Rich Hill having held the lead, Josh Reddick got to face a righty, and took John Lujan deep with a runner on to tie the game at five a piece.
In the end, though, it was all for naught. Alex Wilson came in and did the same thing he’s been doing for the last nine months: got hit. It was only through luck that Lucas Duda’s bomb came before the other two hits Wilson would allow instead of after, keeping the final score as close as it was.
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