Tempers flare as Red Sox blow early lead to drop to 2-8 this season

Gabrielle Starr, Boston Herald on Apr 6, 2026

Published in Baseball

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BOSTON — “Sell the team” chants rang out from fans at Fenway Park for the second consecutive game Monday night.

It was the top of the fourth inning as reliever Danny Coulombe tried in vain to clean up a bases-loaded mess left behind by starter Brayan Bello, pulled by manager Alex Cora after 3 1/3 frenetic innings.

Hours later, the Boston Red Sox dropped the series opener to the Milwaukee Brewers, 8-6. The Red Sox are an MLB-worst 2-8 to begin the season.

“There’s a lot of stuff that’s not working out for us,” Cora said. “We’re not playing well.”

The Red Sox entered the fourth with a 3-0 lead, a promising sign for an offense that has struggled mightily in the first two weeks of the regular season. They jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first on a Roman Anthony leadoff double and Trevor Story two-out RBI single.

Boston tacked on a pair of runs in the bottom of the third, which Anthony led off with a single. After he was joined on the bases by walk machine Masataka Yoshida, the inning devolved into chaos.

Willson Contreras has a lengthy history with the Brewers. He spent the first ten years of his MLB career on the their National League Central rival Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals before the Red Sox acquired him from the latter during the offseason. For Contreras, 23 of his 130 career hit-by-pitches came courtesy of Milwaukee pitchers.

Brewers starter Brandon Woodruff, who’d hit Contreras with a pitch five times before, threw a 92.9 mph sinker up and in. Hit-by-pitch No. 6.

Contreras looked outraged and began shouting as he dropped his bat and began walking to first to load the bases.

The Brewers challenged the call, and though the video replay appeared to show the pitch sneaking past Contreras as it reached his brother William’s glove, the call stood due to lack of evidence.

Brewers manager Pat Murphy next took exception to Contreras’ hard slide into second base on Wilyer Abreu’s RBI force-out. Former Red Sox infielder David Hamilton, dealt to Milwaukee for third baseman Caleb Durbin, remained in the game, the left leg of his pants ripped just below the knee. Story’s sacrifice fly plated the third Red Sox run before Woodruff escaped further damage.

But just like the previous day’s contest, in which the Red Sox took a 4-0 lead in the third and immediately gave it away over the course of the next two innings, their advantage was short-lived.

Bello had stranded two Brewers per inning through three, a walk and a base hit each time. The top of the fourth began the same way with a leadoff single by Sal Frelick and a walk to Hamilton. Blake Perkins’ sacrifice bunt put both men in scoring position, and Bello’s fifth walk of the night filled the diamond.

A fielding error by Durbin put Milwaukee on the board and brought Cora out to the mound.

Against Coulombe, the Brewers played musical chairs around the bases like a live-action reshoot of the 1946 animated classic “Baseball Bugs.” Christian Yelich singled to score the second run, Garrett Mitchell’s single tied the game and Coulombe walked Jake Bauers to force in the go-ahead run before getting Luis Rengifo to ground into an inning-ending double play.

The Red Sox quickly re-tied the game in the bottom of the inning on a Durbin leadoff double and fielding error by his trade counterpart, Hamilton.

Woodruff sharpened his work as the innings progressed. After Contreras’ game-tying ground-rule double in the fourth, Woodruff retired his last six batters. He needed five pitches to get Story, Marcelo Mayer and Durbin to go 1-2-3 in the fifth.

The crowd of 35,107 restarted their “sell the team” chants with renewed vigor in the top of the eighth, as Mitchell’s two-out RBI single and an erratic throwing error by Anthony in left field put the Brewers back on top 7-5. Anthony’s throw missed the cutoff man in Durbin and rolled all the way to the backstop, making catcher Carlos Narváez retrieve it.

Fans were exiting en masse in the top of the ninth when Frelick’s RBI single off Rule 5 rookie Ryan Watson, fumbled by reigning AL Gold Glove center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela, increased Milwaukee’s lead to three. The stragglers who remained renewed the “Sell the team” chants for a third time.

The Boston bats which had shown so much life early on went quietly in the sixth, seventh – wasting Yoshida’s leadoff walk and Contreras’ subsequent single off reliever Aaron Ashby – and the eighth.

But Contreras was a man on a mission. Facing Angel Zerpa with two outs in the ninth, he sent a 1-1 changeup soaring into the metalwork of the Green Monster’s left light tower to bring Boston within two runs. Contreras’ five times on base tied his career-high for the fourth time.

Abreu followed with a single before Story ground out to end the game after three hours and 18 minutes.

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