It had been five years, eight months, and 21 days since the Red Sox last played at Dodger Stadium, hoisted their fourth World Series trophy of the century in the air, and popped champagne in the visitor’s clubhouse.

2,091 days later, the Dodgers pulled out a last-minute 4-1 victory and handed the Red Sox one of their biggest gut-punch losses of the season.

Boston walked the narrowest tightrope on Friday night, holding a 1-0 lead – courtesy of Jarren Duran’s 11th home run of the year – until the bottom of the eighth, when Freddie Freeman’s grand slam turned the game on its head. The rare bullpen implosion harkened back to that ’18 postseason run, when Alex Cora mitigated the unreliable relief options by utilizing the starting rotation for over a dozen innings of relief work.

The story of Friday night should’ve been Nick Pivetta’s gem of a start. Over six shutout innings he held the Dodgers to two hits, one walk, and eight punchouts, and all on just 90 pitches.

“Outstanding, outstanding,” Alex Cora told reporters. “Reese (McGuire) did an outstanding job with him tonight. Mixing up the pitches, fastball up, the sweeper, the cutter. … That was good enough right there, gave us a chance to win.”

Getting Shohei Ohtani to strike out swinging is no easy feat, and the Red Sox starter did so thrice on Friday night. He and Milwaukee’s Aaron Civale are the only two pitchers to fan Ohtani three times in a game this season.

“I really enjoy it,” said Pivetta of facing Ohtani. “You play this game to play the best at all times. He’s one of the best, if not the best, so I enjoy matchups like that and enjoy times like that. It’s just what I live for.”

Pivetta’s performance was the rotation’s sixth consecutive start of at least six innings, the club’s longest streak since the six games between July 21-26, 2019. Over three starts this month, he owns a 1.83 ERA, 28 strikeouts and just five walks over 19 ⅔ innings, and has yet to allow a home run. For the first time since May 19, the 31-year-old righty’s ERA is back under 4.00 (3.87).

Unfortunately, Pivetta could only watch as the Dodgers stole the game back from the Boston bullpen, leaving him with a no-decision. After a fairly quick seventh inning in which he worked around a one-out walk, Zack Kelly walked Miguel Vargas to begin the eighth. He got Chris Taylor called out on strikes, but the wheels were already in motion. Cora attempted a left-on-lefty matchup, but Ohtani greeted Brennan Bernardino with a first-pitch ground-rule double. Bernardino intentionally walked Will Smith to fill up the diamond, Freeman sent a curveball deep to right and gone. Game over.

“You pick your poison,” Cora explained of intentionally walking Smith, whom he called “one of the best hitters in the league,” to get to Freeman. “We’re trying to get a ground-ball double-play there, it just happened that he hit a grand slam.”

“Obviously, we are where we’re at,” Cora said, alluding to Chris Martin and Justin Slaten going on the injured list before the break. “That pocket right there, Ohtani, Smith, Freeman, you got to pick your guys and try to maximize the bullpen, and it just didn’t work out tonight.”

“We’re going to be fine (without Martin and Slaten),” the manager assured. “We’re not gonna make excuses. We’re gonna keep moving forward.”

The slam may been irrelevant, or at least surmountable, had the Red Sox not wasted every opportunity with men on base. Boston out-hit Los Angeles 9-4, but were 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position. They left six men on base, struck out nine times, and failed to draw a walk. Six times, they led off an inning with a base hit, only to reach the third out with nothing to show for it.

“Man at second, no outs a few times, right? We didn’t put the ball in play, or we didn’t get the over, and against teams like that, you have to just keep adding on,” Cora said. “That’s the most important thing, and we didn’t do a good job tonight.”

Duran was the exception. The ‘spark plug’ leadoff man picked up right where he’d left off before the break. Or rather, during the break. Fresh off homering to deliver Team American League the game-winning lead in his first career All-Star at-bat – and taking home MVP honors as a result – Duran did the same for his usual squad. The SoCal native led off the game with a first-pitch double, and his two-out solo homer broke up the stalemate in the top of the fifth. The 397-footer to center would only be a homer in three ballparks; fortunately, Dodger Stadium was one of them.

Trailing 4-1 entering the top of the ninth, Masataka Yoshida led off with a single. It would prove to be the sixth and final time the Red Sox turned a leadoff hit into nothing; Wilyer Abreu struck out, and Dom Smith ground into a game-ending double play on the first pitch.

Loss No. 43 is is easily one of the most brutal of the season. There haven’t been many losses of late, in general, and very few of this caliber; the Red Sox were 42-2 this year when leading after the seventh. Their last blown-save loss in the eighth inning or later was on April 16. That it’s the first game after the All-Star break, with the trade deadline less than two weeks away, sends the pressure to bounce back on Saturday into the stratosphere.