CLEVELAND -- It's the perfect metaphor for the mood hovering over the Red Sox.

Suicide squeeze.

That's the play that beat the Red Sox Thursday afternoon, wasting a terrific pitching performance by Jon Lester. The Cleveland Indians completed their first sweep of the Sox since 2001, 1-0, before a crowd of 10,594 in Progressive Field that included a handful of Sox fans wearing paper bags over their heads.

The Sox are now 0-6, only the fourth time in franchise history they've lost their first six, and the first time since 1945.

Advice for the Sox when they line up for pregame introductions Friday: Gentlemen, wear your hard hats. And ear muffs.

Lester went seven innings, allowed just three hits and struck out 9 after no whiffs in the opener.

He was matched by Indians right-hander Fausto Carmona, who went 7 innings and allowed just two hits.

Daniel Bard entered in the eighth and walked leadoff man Adam Everett, one of the weakest hitters in baseball. When he fell to 2 and 0 on Orlando Cabrera, pitching coach Curt Young came to the mound. On the next pitch, a strike, Everett stole second, and was bunted to third by Orlando Cabrera.

With a 2-and-1 count on Asdrubal Cabrera, Everett broke for the plate and Cabrera reached out and laid down a perfect bunt down the third-base line.

The game ended in bizarre fashion, as Darnell McDonald, just inserted as a pinch runner for David Ortiz, who had drawn a two-out walk, slipped and fell as he turned second on an infield hit by J.D. Drew that had caromed off pitcher Chris Perez to third baseman Everett.