The Red Sox were supposed to spend their long weekend in Chicago padding a record very much in need of wins.

Instead, after a dominant 24-hit, 12-run barrage in the series opener, Boston has dropped the middle two games of the series.

In Saturday’s 6-1 loss, nearly everything that could possibly go wrong did. The White Sox tallied 10 hits while the Red Sox were no-hit for four innings, Alex Cora was ejected, Brayan Bello imploded, and Rafael Devers exited in the eighth due to knee soreness.

Let’s work backwards.

“Knee is bother him, so we took him out,” Cora told reporters following the loss. “Probably give him tomorrow off. Nothing seriously, but obviously when he expressed that, then we have to be smart about it. Hopefully, there’s nothing worse than a little bit of soreness.”

“I don’t think it’s as bad as it was early in the season,” he added. “But he’s very honest about his body, so we’ll take care of him.”

The Red Sox already can’t

Bello lasted just 4.2 innings and took the loss. He allowed five earned runs on nine hits, including a go-ahead grand slam, issued three walks, and only struck out two.

“Three walks, right?” Cora said. “The stuff wasn’t as great, velo was a little bit down, and command was off.”

The death knell came in the bottom of the fifth. After getting two outs – with Danny Mendick’s double in between – Bello issued back-to-back walks to Corey Julks and Zach DeLoach. They’d be the first of seven consecutive White Sox baserunners. With the bases loaded, Andrew Vaughn singled to get Chicago on the board, and Gavin Sheets hit his first career grand slam.

Paul DeJong, Oscar Colás, and Lenyn Sosa reloaded the bases on three consecutive singles before the Red Sox made a pitching change.

Bello couldn’t hide his frustration, slamming his glove on the mound.

“Well, it’s kind of like the manager getting thrown out, right? The heat of the moment or frustration, I don’t know,” Cora said. “I never expected that. I’ve seen that once, and it was in a bigger moment, right? Yeah, so out-of-character, let’s put it that way.”

Bello, whom the Red Sox signed to a six-year extension in early March, has struggled to find consistency this spring. In his first five starts of the season – before going on the injured list for three weeks with right-lat tightness – he allowed nine earned runs (11 total) on 21 hits, issued seven walks, and struck out 26 batters over 26.2 innings. Over his last five starts, opponents are hitting .303 with 12 walks and 24 strikeouts over 26.2 innings; his ERA is 6.75 over that span, now 4.78 on the season.

“As I always say, man, this is a work in progress,” Cora said. “This kid has electric stuff, but he’s still learning in the big-league level, and the more he pitches, the better he’s gonna be. We just gotta help him.

“My expectations out of him is to go out there every five days and give us a chance to win. He did that in the last three. Tonight he didn’t do it. Be ready for the next one.”

Zack Kelly managed to escape the bases-loaded jam, but the damage was done. Aside from DeJong’s solo homer, in the seventh, Chase Anderson took care of the remaining three frames with relative ease.

Boston had their chances early on, as they often do. White Sox rookie Nick Nastrini – who’d lost all five of his first career starts – issued three leadoff walks, four overall, between the first and fourth frames.

They stranded all of them. And as usual, it came back to bite them.

After ten consecutive scoreless Red Sox innings, Bobby Dalbec led off the fifth with a home run. His first round-tripper of the season ended Nastrini’s no-hit bid, but couldn’t inject life into the rest of the Red Sox lineup, and would prove to be their only run of the contest. David Hamilton followed with a single to left and his 12th stolen base of the season, and he advanced to third when Ceddanne Rafaela struck out. Duran walked for the second time, but was too far off the bag and the White Sox successfully picked him off.

“Weird game. We put pressure on them,” Cora said. “The pickoff didn’t help. I was very aggressive with pinch-hitting there, because I felt that it was gonna be a grinder.”

Jamie Westbrook came in to pinch-hit for Enmanuel Valdez, and when he was called out on strikes, neither he nor his manager agreed with the call. Cora emerged from the dugout, and home-plate umpire Alan Porter ejected him before he’d even reached the plate.

Cora got his money’s worth with his first ejection of the season, dirtying up the plate and giving Porter a piece of his mind.

“Actually, I looked at the pitch later, and my bad. It was actually a strike,” the Sox skipper admitted.

Boston entered the ninth inning with only four hits in the game. Chicago sent Michael Kopech, a former Red Sox top prospect, to the White Sox in the Chris Sale trade.

Boston loaded the bases on a one-out hit-by-pitch of Dom Smith, Dalbec’s walk, and Hamilton’s single – which gave him the only multi-hit performance in the lineup – but Rafaela and Duran struck out to strand them and lose.

The lineup tallied five hits, six walks, and struck out 13 times. They were 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position and left nine men on base.

“We need to do better,” Cora said. “We go through some stretches like this, and every team in the big leagues goes through it, it just happens that today was (0-for-11), we had traffic all over the place, and we weren’t able to take advantage of it.”

But once again, Boston is under .500. The best they can do, before a day off Monday and hosting the dominant Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees, is salvage a series split with the White Sox on Sunday.

Against the so-called worst team in baseball.