Red Sox Make 54-Year MLB History With Excruciating Loss Vs. Phillies

It often seems like the Boston Red Sox invent new ways to lose baseball games.

Despite a brilliant effort from starting pitcher Walker Buehler against Philadelphia Phillies ace Zack Wheeler, the Red Sox lost 3-2 in 10 innings on Monday night. And the final play of the game was one you had to see to believe.

After Jordan Hicks walked the bases loaded with no outs, he got ahead of the Phillies' Edmundo Sosa 1-2 before a slider missed outside, and Sosa checked his swing. The only problem? Sosa's bat ticked off catcher Carlos Narváez's glove, meaning it went in the book as a walk-off catcher's interference.

It felt like the loss was coming as soon as the Red Sox didn't score in the top of the 10th, but the ending was still so utterly bizarre that it managed to be a painful defeat.

Alright, so they didn't invent this method of losing, per se. But they came awfully close--the last time a team got walked off on a catcher's interference was on Aug. 1, 1971, according to MLB.com researcher Sarah Langs. That was the only other instance since at least the start of the divisional era (1969).

It was a particularly rough night for Narváez, who couldn't keep a couple of wild pitches in front of him, one of which directly led to the Phillies' second run in the bottom of the fourth inning, and went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts and a walk.

Worst of all, the Red Sox are now an impossible 0-7 this year in extra-inning road games. They've been subpar at scoring the ghost runner from second in those games, managing the feat only five out of 10 times (some games have gone multiple extra innings).

Losing by one run on the road to a division leader with their ace on the mound isn't an unexpected outcome. But it was a game that felt so winnable, and not being able to take it home could have ramifications.

Now, the Red Sox are 1-3 coming out of the All-Star break, and they've still got five more games in a row coming up against top-tier competition. They've got to figure out how to string some wins together, and Monday night was a bad first step.