Cody Ross

When the ball came off of Darin Mastroianni’s bat in the top of the tenth, it looked as if it would be a close call for either Cody Ross or Jacoby Ellsbury to make the catch. It was indeed a close call, but it went in favor of the Twins as the ball landed in the gap and gave Minnesota a runner in scoring position with nobody out.

It was a play that proved costly for the Red Sox, as Jamey Carroll singled home the eventual winning run two batters later. For Ross, it led to regret.

“I feel like I should have caught it,” Ross said. “Any ball that is hit my way I feel like I should catch.

“It’s tough to defend the whole field. It’s a big field out there. I caught a couple balls down the line that could have easily been triples, but that one drops in and it just so happens that it’s in a big part of the game. It was just spotlighted.”

Ross, who went 2-for-5 with a double and a run in the game, said that neither he nor Ellsbury called for the ball, but even so he felt as if he should have caught it.

With the Red Sox having lost three in a row, especially after a loss in which the team could not hold onto its four-run lead to lose in extra innings, Ross said that this most recent step backward for the team was frustrating.

“Any time we lose it’s old,” he said. “Obviously we want to win every single game that we can accomplish, but – we feel like we are a better team than this, and it’s frustrating. It’s a tough time now.

“Talent can only go so far. You have to figure out ways to win. There is a difference between being a really talented group and being a winning group, and on paper it looks like that, but right now it feels like we are treading water. It’s not a good feeling. We have to snap out of it.”