In a 3-3 contest, the Sox received a gift -- an inning-opening error by Rays third baseman Junior Caminero on a routine ground ball by Ceddanne Rafaela. The misplay offered an opening, and the Red Sox stormed through it.

Trevor Story lined an RBI single to right-center against reliever Jesse Scholtens, giving the Sox a 4-3 lead and giving Story (hitting .333/.378/.536 this month) a fourth straight game in which he'd knocked in a run. He has 95 RBIs for the season.

After an Alex Bregman single put runners on the corners, Masataka Yoshida grounded an RBI single to right, and one batter later, Bregman scored from third with a daring advance on a sac fly to shallow right to give the Sox a three-run lead. Aroldis Chapman followed with a laborious but scoreless ninth for his 31st save of the season -- permitting the Sox to exhale in a game they'd been at risk of blowing.

The Red Sox -- coming off an 11-run eruption on Friday -- seemed primed for more bopping when they loaded the bases with no outs in the second inning on two singles and an error. But in a familiar theme of the past six weeks, the team managed to turn the most promising of situations into the most dismal of results.

Nathaniel Lowe flied out to left -- far too shallow for Yoshida to consider tagging -- and Carlos Narváez followed by grounding into a 6-4-3 double play, as the Red Sox failed to score a single run. Sound familiar? It should.

Since August 10, the Red Sox have had 30 plate appearances with the bases loaded and fewer than two outs -- where a ball in play stands a great likelihood of scoring at least one run, and an extra-base hit might mean three or even four. In those at-bats, the team is 4 for 26 with no extra-base hits, 11 strikeouts (37 percent strikeout rate), and four inning-ending double plays -- a .154/.167/.154 line with a pitiful 13 runs scored.

The Rays nonetheless proved forgivingly accommodating to their guests one inning later, as Adrian Houser yielded a one-out single to Jarren Duran, paid him no heed as the Sox leadoff hitter swiped second base standing, then uncorked a pair of wild pitches to permit Duran to score standing as the Sox took a 1-0 lead.

The Rays tied it in the fourth, when Jake Mangum -- an entry into the ledger of obscure Red Sox tormenters -- drilled an RBI double to left against Kyle Harrison. But Harrison gave no further ground, and indeed seemed to grow stronger as he worked deeper into the contest.

The lefthander, making his first start as a member of the Sox, attacked the Rays with a balanced mix of four-seam fastballs and slurves. Harrison scattered four hits -- none with runners in scoring position -- while walking two and striking out five over six innings in which he allowed just one run.

The outing was dazzling in its own right, but even more so given how long it had been since Harrison had been entrusted with such a task. He hadn't pitched in a game in 10 days, and hadn't started in the big leagues since early June -- just before the trade that sent him from the Giants to Boston as part of the package for Rafael Devers.

The Sox lineup finally offered a measure of support to Harrison in the middle innings. Bregman added to the mounting signs of his resurgence, lining a two-out, RBI single to center to put the Sox ahead, 2-1, in the fifth.

One inning later, the Sox again proved opportunistic. Romy Gonzalez reached first after getting clipped on the hand, took second on a steal, then raced to third on a sacrifice bunt by Nate Eaton -- who has made an impressively multifaceted contribution while filling in for Wilyer Abreu and Roman Anthony this month. Gonzalez then scored on a sac fly by Lowe as the Sox took a 3-1 lead.

But the Sox bullpen coughed up the two-run advantage in the seventh, when Justin Wilson issued a left-on-left leadoff walk to Josh Lowe followed by an RBI double to No. 8 hitter Nick Fortes. With two outs and the tying run on second, manager Alex Cora summoned righthander Justin Slaten -- who'd retired all 10 batters he'd faced in his prior three outings -- to face the Rays' best hitter, Yandy Díaz. But Díaz bested Slaten, shooting a single down the right-field line to score Fortes.

Error opens the door for Red Sox to turn a ninth-inning tie to a win over the Rays - The Boston Globe