For years, Fenway Park was the definition of home-field advantage. In addition to having to face the Red Sox, a team visiting America’s oldest ballpark had to contend with the magnitude of such a historic venue and the passionate, roaring crowd known as the ‘Fenway Faithful.’

Not this year, though. Certainly not on Saturday evening, when the Red Sox couldn’t get anything going against the Arizona Diamondbacks, who took the game 4-1 and clinched a series win.

Diamondbacks starter Zac Gallen entered the contest with a 4.69 ERA in 10 road starts – compared to a 3.19 ERA in 11 at home – and took a no-hitter into the bottom of the fifth. Connor Wong broke it up with a one-out single, but the Red Sox never capitalized. Over six shutout innings, Gallen allowed just two hits, four walks, and struck out nine.

“He was a handful today, for sure.” first baseman Triston Casas said of Gallen. “He had a bunch of different weapons going for him today.”

Kutter Crawford went five innings, and gave up two earned runs on three hits, issued a pair of walks, hit a batter, and struck out three.

“He did a good job. Gave us five,” said manager Alex Cora. “He was able to get the lefties. So good enough. The bullpen was rested, so we were very aggressive with them.”

Crawford disagreed, calling his performance “overall, pretty mediocre.”

“Didn’t get ahead as much as I wanted to, didn’t throw enough strikes. I got a little trouble there in the fourth and fifth,” the Red Sox right-hander said. “I felt like I made some pretty good pitches, but yeah for the most party, I felt like I competed pretty well every single pitch, but just wasn’t in the zone enough.”

The game was scoreless until the top of the fourth, when Joc Pederson doubled, Josh Bell walked, and both advanced on a wild pitch and scored on Eugenio Suárez’s double. Those two runs would’ve been enough to win the game, but the Boston bullpen was unable to stave off the snakes in the seventh. Lucas Sims issued back-to-back one-out walks to Geraldo Perdomo and Luis Guillorme. Cora brought in Brennan Bernardino, who issued a pair of two-out walks to Corbin Carroll and Jake McCarthy to load the bases and force in a run. A wild pitch scored another before Bernardino could end the inning.

The Red Sox offense had time and opportunities. They collected five hits and drew five walks, including a pair by Wilyer Abreu and Rafael Devers in the bottom of the first. But they were 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position, left eight men on base, and struck out 13 times, including a four-K performance – known as a ‘Golden Sombrero’ – by Casas, who called his day “pretty self-explanatory.”

“He was throwing a curveball that was starting as a ball, coming through the zone as a strike, and then ending as a ball,” Casas explained. “So it’s tough to make a decision on which ones to swing at, especially with two strikes, especially when he’s getting ahead with Strike 1, especially when he’s got runners on base and you don’t want to roll into double plays and have inning-killers.”

“His willingness to put guys on base makes him that much tougher to hit, because he’s not attacking the zone, he’s just throwing stuff that’s so close to the zone that you have to respect it and give it a swing, at least,” Casas said, adding that Fenway’s late-afternoon shadows were “no excuse” for the home team.

“On our part, I think we’re pretty used to them,” the first baseman said. “I had guys on the other team coming to first and being like, ‘Man, this is one of the tougher ones for sure.’ … We’re used to it. We hit batting practice at that time every day.”

With his team down to their last three outs, Rob Refsnyder led off the bottom of the ninth with a single to left, and motored home on Masataka Yoshida’s double low off the Monster. That would be the extent of the rally, as Mickey Gasper, Wong, and Ceddanne Rafaela went in order to complete the loss.

The Red Sox are 67-61 on the season, but 29-34 at Fenway. The pitching staff entered the day with a 4.51 ERA at home, compared to a 3.91 ERA on the road. Including their lone run on Saturday, the Boston bats have has scored 291 times at Fenway this year; they’ve scored 49 more than that elsewhere. They have about five weeks left to save themselves from posting a losing record at home, something they haven’t done since they went 11-20 in the shortened 2020 season.

“It’s definitely frustrating. These fans pay a lot of money to come support us, night in, night out, day in, day out,” Crawford said. “It’s disappointing that we can’t play better for them.”

They have even less time to get back into the Wild Card race.

“We know what we have to do to make it (into the postseason),” Cora said before Friday’s series opener. “We just got to be consistent in a few things, especially here. We have to play better at home.”

“It’s a good time to play good baseball at home,” the Sox skipper continued, “Because we understand that, if we get to September and there’s meaningful games in this venue, it’ll be fun. It’ll be fun, it’ll be different for other teams. Like the teams that we play in October, yeah they feel it, but we have to get there. And in September, this place is going to be legit. It’s going to be fun to be a part of it, you know, but we have to do our job. We gotta close the gap from here to September 1.”

The Red Sox know what they need to do. They just can’t find a way to do it.

And they certainly don’t look like they’re having fun.