The Red Sox led the AL East for much of the season and held a nine-game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays in the wild-card race on the morning of Sept. 4. But Boston went 7-20 in September to blow the lead and miss the playoffs entirely, a collapse that wasn’t complete until closer Jonathan Papelbon blew a one-run lead with one strike to go against Baltimore on Wednesday night and the Orioles won 4-3.
Just minutes later, the Rays completed their comeback from a 7-0 deficit against the New York Yankees and clinched the wild-card berth.
“A very quiet day in Boston after a terrible, terrible month for the fans. Night after night they came, they tuned in. Rain, quiet streets,’’ Red Sox owner John Henry wrote on Twitter. “Congratulations to the entire Tampa Bay organization on a miraculous, but well-earned passport to the postseason.’’
Henry did not respond to a request for comment, and co-owner Tom Werner said he was “still absorbing last night’s collapse.’’ But it was not just one night of failure that doomed this team.
The Red Sox lost their first six games and opened the season 2-10, but they went a major league-best 81-42 from then through Aug. 31 to take a comfortable lead in the playoff race. As it slowly disappeared, players insisted they would pull out of the slide in time; but Epstein and manager Terry Francona both acknowledged on Thursday that they saw signs of trouble.
“A lot of things went wrong and a lot of things had to go wrong for us to blow the lead, and they did. But I don’t think they were completely unforeseen,’’ Epstein said. “The bottom line is we didn’t find a way to stop the slide.’’
Francona said he called a team meeting earlier in the month in Toronto — even after a 14-0 win. He did not specify what he saw, but said “normally, as a season progresses, there’s events that make you care about each other.’’
