Sunday School: Padres Teach Sox a Lesson in Pain
Dylan Cease handed out homework, Bello forgot his pencil, and the offense showed up just in time for extra credit that didn’t count.
Let’s Start at the End
Final score: Padres 6, Red Sox 2.
But that number doesn’t do justice to the mood. This wasn’t just a loss — this was the baseball equivalent of getting invited to a potluck and showing up with a half-eaten bag of chips.
First Inning – The Setup
You know that rare feeling when the Sox come out looking sharp early? Yeah, me neither. Bello took the mound and immediately looked like he was playing a game called “Let’s See How Many Padres Can Reach Base Before Someone Notices.” He tiptoed through the first couple innings but you could feel the storm clouds forming.
Dylan Cease? He didn’t just look comfortable, he looked bored. First inning, second inning — just dealing, like he had a tee time after the game and wanted to make sure he made it.
Third Inning – Trouble Finds Bello
Here’s how it went: Bello gets one out, then suddenly the Padres start hitting like they’ve been reading our scouting report since breakfast.
Luis Arraez laces a two-run double into the gap. Padres 2–0.
Bello tries to regroup, but Fernando Tatis Jr. decides to keep the party going with an RBI single. Padres 3–0.
Before you can even get back to your seat, Xander Bogaerts — yes, our ex — lines another RBI to make it 4–0.
By the time Bello escaped, San Diego’s dugout was grinning like they’d just found a coupon for free beer.
Fourth & Fifth – Cease in Cruise Control
Boston’s bats? Silent. Not “slightly quiet,” but silent like an unplugged radio. Cease was spotting his fastball, dropping sliders, and making our hitters look like they were reading the wrong signs. He wasn’t overpowering us, he was dissecting us. The swings we took? You could’ve used them for a Little League instructional video on “What Not to Do.”
Bello, for his part, kept leaking base runners. Padres tack on their fifth run thanks to a groundout RBI in the fifth. At this point, if Bello’s ERA had a pulse, it would’ve been asking for a medic.
Seventh Inning – The False Hope
This is where Boston briefly tricked us into thinking there was a comeback brewing. Bogaerts boots a grounder — the one gift he gave us all afternoon — and two runs cross the plate. 5–2.
Fenway (and living rooms across New England) perk up. Bases loaded, one out. Cue the “OK, we’re back in this!” speeches. Then Padres reliever Adrian Morejon walks in, yawns, and proceeds to strike out the next batter like it was batting practice. Rally over. Dreams crushed.
Eighth Inning – Just for Good Measure
As if they didn’t already have the game in their pocket, the Padres score again in the eighth. A sac fly from Ryan O’Hearn makes it 6–2. That’s not “insurance runs” — that’s rubbing salt in the wound and then asking if it stings.
Ninth Inning – The Mercy Kill
David Morgan shuts us down in the ninth without so much as a whimper from the lineup. The game ends the way it lived: with us wondering how the Padres look like a playoff team and we look like a group that met in the parking lot.
The Sarcastic Box Score
Pitching:
Bello: 5.2 IP, 6 H, 5 ER, 3 BB, 7 K — ERA now sponsored by “High Fructose Corn Syrup.”
Bullpen: Solid, but by then it was like mopping up after a water balloon fight.
Hitting:
Four total hits. You could count them on one hand and still have a finger left to point blame.
Zero extra-base hits from the top of the order.
The only real damage came courtesy of an error from the guy we let walk.
Why This Loss Stings More Than the Average L
This wasn’t just a bad pitching day or an unlucky bounce. This was the kind of game that exposes everything wrong with the roster in one neat little package:
Starting pitching that unravels at the first sign of adversity.
A lineup that needs divine intervention to score before the seventh inning.
An inability to capitalize on big moments (see: bases loaded, one out, and nothing).
If you’re wondering how this team will handle Houston next, you might want to keep the Tums nearby.
Looking Ahead – Houston, We Have a Problem
The Astros don’t exactly specialize in sympathy wins. If we give them the same early cushion we handed San Diego, they’ll turn it into a football score before the stretch. This is one of those series where we either snap out of the funk or start thinking about September call-ups earlier than planned.
Subscribe Before the Next Meltdown
Subscribe to Red Sox Digest. Because whether we bounce back or keep rolling downhill like a shopping cart with one bad wheel, you’re going to want the unfiltered blow-by-blow. I’ll keep roasting them — someone has to.