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The Boston Red Sox Wednesday, August 19, 2020 * The Boston Globe Seven-run sixth for Phillies extends Red Sox skid to nine Julian McWilliams If it’s not the offense to blame, it’s the defense. If it’s not the defense, it’s the offense. If it’s not the bullpen, it’s the starting pitching. If it’s not the starting pitching, it’s the bullpen. That’s the sign of a bad team, and thus, the sign of this Red Sox club. Which lost its ninth straight game on Tuesday, 13-6, to the Philadelphia Phillies at Fenway Park. The skid is Boston’s longest since May 2014, when John Farrell’s defending champions dropped 10 in a row. The Phillies, meanwhile, won a fourth straight to get back to .500 at 9-9. They’re scheduled to start 2015 Cy Young winner Jake Arrieta in Wednesday’s matinee finale of the two-game set, opposed by Kyle Hart, who’ll be making his second MLB start. The Sox (6-18) have allowed 86 runs in losing nine straight, the most they’ve ever given up in a nine-game run. An early 3-0 lead wasn’t enough to overcome the struggles of their relievers. Some observations from the game. ⋅ On Tuesday, it wasn’t Zack Godley’s start — the Red Sox built him a 3-0 lead after three innings, and he allowed just a run in four. It was the bullpen’s implosion. The Sox saw a 4-2 lead vanish in the top of the sixth inning. Lefthander Josh Taylor, pitching for a second straight night after missing the season’s first 22 games following a COVID-19 diagnosis, allowed three runs and recorded just two outs. Heath Hembree took over in a tie game and yielded four runs to five batters without recording an out, the worst of the four hits a 409-foot, three-run homer by Bryce Harper. The seven-run inning put Philadelphia up, 9-4, and made Tuesday the ninth time this season — and seventh in this nine-game losing streak — Boston pitching allowed at least eight runs. “We get to that point, we feel good going to those guys in the bullpen and it didn’t work out,” Red Sox manager Ron Roenicke said. “So, again, we played a really good game for a few innings, and all of a sudden it gets out of hands in a hurry.” ⋅ The Phillies weren’t missing the fastball in that sixth. Out of the seven hits the Sox allowed that inning, just one — Didi Gregorius’s RBI single to plate the final run — came on a breaking ball/offspeed pitch. The hits weren’t cheap either, with four of them carrying an exit velocity of at least 103 miles per hour. Harper’s homer left his bat at 105.6. ⋅ In addition to the hard contact, once Hembree entered, the Phillies took advantage in the run game. Hembree is slow to the plate and catcher Kevin Plawecki doesn’t have a good arm. (On Aug. 10, Tampa stole four bases off Plawecki in five attempts.) Roman Quinn stole second and scored on Andrew McCutchen’s single. McCutchen stole second, then scored on Harper’s homer. Harper got in on the act, too, swiping second in the eighth. ”I expected to do my job and get us through that inning and then it got a lot worse after that,” Henbree said. “The at-bat with Bryce, it was a fastball I missed down. I was trying to elevate it a bit more.” ⋅ Perhaps this was the game that will bust Rafael Devers out of his depressing slump. In his first two at-bats Tuesday against Phillies starter Zach Eflin, Devers singled off the Green Monster, then doubled. Both hits were special. Devers’ single came on a 3-and-2, 94-m.p.h. sinker that was perfectly spotted low and outside. That didn’t matter to Devers, who sent a screaming liner off the wall that left his bat at 103.2 m.p.h. He eventually came around to score after Xander Bogaerts singled to right field. The double was more proof Devers might be finding his groove. Teams have been pumping Devers with hard stuff, either high and outside or up and in. Needless to say, Devers has struggled with that this season, posting a 50 percent whiff rate on balls high and outside and a 56 percent whiff rate on pitches high and tight. On a 1-1 pitch, Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto wanted a sinker low and in, but Eflin left it high and outside — a mistake, but not necessarily a bad one against Devers in 2020. On Tuesday, Devers made him pay. He added a single in the fifth off reliever Blake Parker for his first three-hit game of the season. Devers had 19 three-hit games a year ago. “He definitely needed it,’' shortstop Xander Bogaerts said. ”He wanted them. Listen, man, this season is only 60 games. We’re trying to not put a lot of pressure on ourselves. Obviously, I know the kid loves the game and he works hard. He was a guy that was most due for this. I told him after the game, ‘Hey listen here, keep going up from here.’ ” It’s full speed ahead for Red Sox outfield prospect Jarren Duran Alex Speier Andrew Benintendi is on the injured list due to a rib injury. Jackie Bradley Jr. is sidelined by an injured wrist. And the most exciting player at the team’s alternate training site in Pawtucket happens to be an outfielder who is showing a growing skill set that suggests potential big league impact. Entering 2020, Jarren Duran already featured one head-turning tool — elite speed — that, in combination with solid bat-to-ball skills, gave him potential big league impact both offensively and defensively. But after the 2018 seventh-rounder burst onto the scene in pro ball as a spray hitter with little pop, in intrasquad games at McCoy Stadium, he’s continuing to translate some offseason swing modifications into loud contact. The overall impression he’s forged has been formidable. “Jarren is one of the most talented players that I’ve seen step on a baseball field, to put it bluntly. He’s got just about everything that you would want in a baseball player. If I’m pitching, he can play behind me any day. He’s got it both offensively and defensively,” said Red Sox lefthander Kyle Hart. “My hot take on Jarren Duran is that he’s going to play in the big leagues a long, long time, and it’s just a matter of where and when he’s going to get that opportunity.” That assessment raises an obvious question: Why isn’t he getting that opportunity now, at a time when Jose Peraza and Tzu-Wei Lin have been getting starts in the outfield? The first answer starts with the notion that Duran is still developing on all sides of the ball. He spent his college career at Long Beach State at second base. The 2019 season was his first as a full-time outfielder. While his speed allows him to outrun mistakes, he’s still learning routes and positioning. “It’s getting better. It’s still a work in progress … As he gets more reps, he’s going to get more and more comfortable,” said PawSox manager Billy McMillon, who as a minor league outfield coordinator oversaw Duran’s initial transition to the outfield in 2018. “As he gets cleaner and cleaner defensively, he’s going to be making a stronger case for the big leagues.” Duran’s offensive identity, too, is amidst a metamorphosis. After the 2019 season, he worked with California-based hitting guru Doug Latta on his setup, trying to identify both ways to get to the pitches on the inner half of the plate that he typically hit for ground balls last year while also changing from a flat bat path to one where he catches the ball with more of an uppercut. “Generally there’s been a focus on swing path, getting out to a better position to impact the ball more consistently,” said Red Sox farm director Ben Crockett. “[He’s] trying to put him in a better position to hit the ball in the gaps with impact when opportunity presents itself … to both gaps rather than pushing it to the opposite field.” In simulated games, the result of those changes has been striking. Duran hit .303/.367/.408 with 46 steals between High A Salem and Double A Portland last year, but with just five homers. In Pawtucket, Duran has been blasting pitches to the far reaches of McCoy Stadium, blasting homers to dead center (“He hit one a mile off me,” noted Hart) and to the highest rows of the bleachers in right-center. Such blasts represent a clear change from his earlier career — not just for the fact that he’s driving the ball, but that increasingly, Duran seems aware of the pitches that he can drive and those he can’t. “The bat has progressed a lot,” said McMillon. “It seems like he has a better command of the strike zone. His pitch selection has really improved. He’s hitting the ball a lot harder than I remember a couple years ago.” Nonetheless, Duran is still working to refine his approach with his altered mechanics. And he’s doing so in one of the strangest player development and evaluation environments that anyone has encountered.