But at least it reinforced one thing, Wright’s outing last Friday was an aberration on his pitching log. Wright spent more time trying to keep his fingers dry than executing pitches. Whenever a knuckleballer has an outing like Wright did last Friday, you wonder if he’s starting a bad streak of games. But that wasn’t the case. It appeared to be starting out that way when Eric Hosmer hit a two-run homer in the first, but Wright was efficient over the next seven innings.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — With the way the Red Sox offense had been scoring of late, Game 1 should have been a win for Steven Wright. Instead, the Sox were stymied by Ian Kennedy and the Royals’ exceptional relievers on Wednesday afternoon, and despite pitching eight innings and allowing three runs with six strikeouts, Wright after the game was talking about a 3-2loss.


The Red Sox had ample time to come back, and they made it 2-2 after five. But Jarrod Dyson tripled in the sixth and scored on Lorenzo Cain’s sacrifice fly for the margin of victory.

But Wright persevered throughout the game. The Red Sox didn’t have to use a reliever, and if they had won it would have accentuated Wright’s outing even more.

What’s weird is that Wright has a 2.73 ERA in 11 career appearances during the day, but the Red Sox are 2-9 in those games, including 0-6 in six starts.

“That’s every starting pitcher’s goal, to go as deep into the game as possible,” Wright said. “I think it was even more crucial today because we had a doubleheader. I felt I threw the ball well, just the one pitch to Hosmer where I thought it was a pretty good pitch, but he went down and got it. Same thing with Dyson. It was a fastball and I thought I could get him to roll it over. He did a good job staying on top of it.”


Wright didn’t have to make any adjustments after Hosmer’s homer.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I just have to throw enough strikes so I have to make it look like a strike. [Ryan Hanigan] started calling a few more curveballs and fastballs early in the count. KC is really aggressive and they want to hit. So when you start throwing strikes and get ahead early it just plays up the knuckleball.”

Wright also said he was happy to have a dry day.

“It wasn’t the wet ball the last time, it was my hands, my glove, where everything was wet,” he said. “I didn’t have a way to dry my fingers. I had to think about hanging on to the ball and got away from actually executing the pitch.”

He said of the knuckleball’s movement, “I just throw it. Sometimes it dips, dives. I don’t know what it’s going to do, but we had good movement on it and I think other than the home run I threw it pretty well today.”

Wright remains one of Boston’s top starters. While the rotation had been struggling a tad entering the game, with a 5.54 ERA over the last 13 games, some of that was Wright’s last outing, when he allowed five runs and nine hits over 4⅔ innings. Some of that was David Price’s bad start, too, before his last good start. Rick Porcello also had his worst start of the season on Tuesday, and Clay Buchholz has contributed the most to that bad stretch as he has yet to get untracked.


Scoring 10-plus runs a game simply wasn’t going to continue, especially at Kauffman Stadium, where the ball doesn’t really jump. So the Sox need better pitching, and Wright provided that.

John Farrell said that Wright “has been outstanding for us all season” and he admired the fact that Wright was able to move on from the home run quickly and settle in. The Royals made a couple of nice plays that saved the day for them — including a great throw by Dyson to nail Xander Bogaerts trying to go from first to third on David Ortiz’s single in the eighth. Also, Alcides Escobar made a great stop on Bogaerts’s hard shot to shortstop and then made a great throw to nail Bogaerts, who elected to slide into first base and may have cost himself a hit and a chance for a Sox rally.

“It’s a shame we couldn’t get the win based on how well Steven pitched,” Bogaerts said. “He pitched a great game. You hate not to win a game like that when Steven goes out and saves our bullpen and keeps us in the game.”

The biggest takeway was, don’t worry about Wright. He’s still pitching at a high level and in no way is he on his way to a long losing streak. His outing said just the opposite.


Nick Cafardo can be reached at cafardo@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickcafardo.