BREAKING NEWS: Baltimore Orioles Fires Head Coach ‘Brandon Michael Hyde’ – Ex Phillies Star And Legend Eyes Job

Red Sox Notes: Alex Cora Surprised By Tough Offensive Trend

The Red Sox offense continued to struggle Tuesday against the Orioles

eries opener against the division rival Baltimore Orioles as they put up a 12-spot in a win.

But while the Red Sox put together that breakout performance, a common thought ran through the team given their offensive struggles in the second half of the season.

“It got to the point (Monday) we were in the dugout kind of saying, ‘Alright, let’s save some for tomorrow’ kind of thing,” Triston Casas said. “Yesterday was a barrage, for sure.”

The Red Sox surely wished they could have had a few of those runs for Tuesday night’s game against the Orioles. Boston tried to scrape together an offense, but largely came up empty in a 5-3 loss at Fenway Park.

It’s an offensive performance that has become too common as of late for the Red Sox. They have scored three runs or less in 10 out of their last 13 games and have gone 2-8 in games when they have that type of production.

After hot offensive stretches in June and July, the offense going flat late in the season comes as a surprise to Red Sox manager Alex Cora, and he doesn’t think he’s alone.

“I think everybody is (surprised),” Cora said. “We’re an offensive club and at one point we were the best offense in baseball. It felt like whenever we faced a righty, we had a good chance of scoring a lot of runs. And we haven’t done that the last month, month-and-a-half.

The Red Sox only manufactured one run over six innings off Orioles right-hander Albert Suárez, who totaled a career-high eight strikeouts in the win. And they scored twice in the eighth inning, but one run was gifted to Boston thanks to a balk from Yennier Cano.

It felt like the Red Sox could carry the momentum of a big offensive night, in which Tyler O’Neill and Rob Refsnyder hit back-to-back homers twice, throughout the series with the Orioles. But Boston’s offense is nothing but inconsistent and that outburst is more of an outlier than the norm.

“I think we’re all slumping together,” Cora said. “If you take a look at it. When we were hot, everybody was hitting the ball all over the place. And it just happened that everybody is struggling at the same time.”