Postseason secured, but Red Sox trending in wrong direction and Guardians take advantage to open series – The Boston Globe

The Red Sox (84-73) have dropped three games in a row and eight of their past 12.

“We’ve still got five games to play, and you [have to] keep guys out there and engaged and ready to roll,” manager Chad Tracy said. “I told the guys before, we earned the right to be in position to be able to line things up. That being said, we still want to go out and win the games. We had a chance to tonight.”

Miller inherited a tied game in the ninth inning and struggled again, allowing a game-deciding run and throwing 22 pitches (10 strikes). He hit his first batter, Chase DeLauter, with a pitch. DeLauter eventually scored on Nathaniel Lowe’s sacrifice fly. Altogether, Miller yielded two hits and a walk.

In September, the Sox’ theoretical top lefthanded setup man has one clean inning in seven attempts, a 8.53 ERA, and a 2.37 WHIP.

Miller said his patience with himself — and a mechanical issue he is trying to fix — is “definitely running thin at this point.”

“I’d be lying if I say otherwise,” he said. “I would like to have been through this by now, be over it. But … there’s no way I can feel better and work through it without throwing [in] a game. So that’s just how it’s going to have to be: keep throwing, get through it.”

Tracy, noting that Miller will pitch in a couple more games before the regular season ends Sunday, added: “I thought today was even another step in the right direction.”

Offensively, the Red Sox had few highlights. Mickey Gasper launched a pinch-hit tying home run off setup man Hunter Gaddis to lead off the eighth, but the Sox totaled nine runners stranded on base and went 0 for 9 with men in scoring position.

In the positives column: Adley Rutschman finished 3 for 4, with two doubles (and a line out to deep center) coming against lefthanders.

Entering the game, Rutschman was 2 for 26 with no extra-base hits against lefties as a member of the Red Sox.

“Being a switch hitter has a lot that goes into it, and you go through phases where you’re hitting good [from] one side and not the other and it flip flops sometimes and then goes back,” Rutschman said. “I want to be in a good spot, especially with the playoffs coming up.”

In a matchup between perhaps the top two rookie pitchers this year, Payton Tolle (5⅔ innings, two runs) was almost equal to fellow lefthander Parker Messick (five innings, one run) of the Guardians.

Tolle slogged through a 22-pitch second frame, during which he allowed three hits and two walks but managed to hold the AL Central-leading Guardians (82-75) to the two runs.

When Tracy pulled him in the sixth, Tolle walked off the Fenway mound — for potentially the last time this year — to a standing ovation from the fans behind the home dugout. He waved back to them.

“I think he’s won them over pretty significantly,” Tracy said.

Tolle finished his rookie season with a 3.03 ERA and 171 strikeouts in 148⅔ innings (26 starts).

Up next: a start in the AL Wild Card Series.

“It’s the postseason. This is what we play for,” Tolle said. “But it is what it is. We go on, and we have a job to do.”

Tim Healey can be reached at timothy.healey@globe.com. Follow him @timbhealey.