NEW YORK — For weeks, the Red Sox have been trying to regain their offensive spark. Now they have one more chance to find him. Tuesday’s 9-0 loss to the electric Cam Schlittler and the Yankees in Game 1 of this American League Wild Card Series has put manager Chad Tracy’s club on the brink of elimination. Life moves fast in the best-of-three wild card round, as evidenced by the fact that teams that took a 1-0 lead won the series 21 of 24 times (88%), including 17 two-game sweeps. Home teams have won all nine series in which they led 1-0, including eight sweeps. But the Red Sox have faced just as discouraging situations, opening the season 32-46 before going 32-5 that propelled them to the postseason. “I haven’t heard the fat lady sing yet,” said Red Sox left-hander Payton Tolle, who took the loss. “We’re going to keep going. I believe in us. So it’ll be fun to watch these guys compete.” [Wednesday].” A few hours before Game 1, Tracy expressed some optimism that he finally had his “A” lineup, something that hardly happened in September when key players (Ceddanne Rafaela, Willson Contreras and Adley Rutschman) missed time with injuries. However, Schlittler, the favorite to win the American League Cy Young Award, is difficult for any lineup to play against. Particularly a team that didn’t have much offensive momentum heading into the playoffs. In their 24 regular-season games in September, the Sox ranked last in the Majors in runs per game (3.0), batting average (.219) and OPS (.651). “We’ve been a little slow on the offensive end, but we’re taking good at-bats,” right fielder Wilyer Abreu said. “Tomorrow will be another day. We can come back and win the series. We still have two games left, so I’m very optimistic about our team and tomorrow will be a really good day for us.” Tuesday, however, was the opposite. It was as if Schlittler, a native of Walpole, Massachusetts, picked up where he left off to close out the Red Sox in Game 3 of last year’s Wild Card Series, when he pitched eight shutout innings. This time, he pitched 6 1/3 innings of shutout baseball, allowing two hits and a walk while striking out 10. To make matters worse, the Red Sox lost Roman Anthony after two at-bats when he felt pain in the same right hand/wrist that kept him out for nearly four months. His status for Game 2 is dubious at best. For the Red Sox, it was simply too much for Schlittler, who is now 4-1 with a 0.47 ERA in six career starts against Boston, including the postseason. “Cam was tremendously good,” Tracy said. “The shapes of the fastballs are well documented. He’s throwing hard. He also had a nice curveball today that you know is there, but he used it a little more often. He hit it if he wanted for strikes. He was able to get it underneath to swing and miss. We couldn’t do much with him.” Tolle, making the first postseason start of his career, kept Boston in the game despite lacking Schlittler’s command. The Yankees tagged him for the game’s first run on Austin Wells’ two-out RBI single in the bottom of the second. Tolle came out with two outs and nobody in the fifth, and Tracy called up left-hander Erik Miller, who struggled in September, to face the dangerous Ben Rice. The move didn’t work. Rice he burned Miller’s third pitch, a 96.8 mph offside sinker, over the wall in center for a solo shot that made the score 2-0. A close game that lasted six innings was undone when the Yankees scored two in the seventh and five in the eighth, including a grand slam by Rice, who, like Schlittler, grew up in a Boston suburb (Cohasset). Rojas Caleb Durbin “It’s going to be a dog fight. That’s the nature of this time of year. “Just come back, refocus and get ready to play hard.”
