BOSTON -- Boston Red Sox right-hander Steven Wright was through four innings at Fenway Park on Friday night with a 5-1 lead over the Houston Astros. It had the feel of another runaway victory for a team that had outscored opponents 56-17 during a five-game winning streak.

If only the rain had let up.

“Yeah, huge factor. It got to the point where I couldn’t keep anything dry,” Wright said when asked if the wet weather had led to his demise, which included a four-run fifth inning and an eventual 7-6 loss. “You’re trying to throw a pitch with your fingers, it makes it a little slippery, hard to get finger pressure.”

Of course, Wright is speaking of his vaunted knuckleball, the driving force behind the 1.52 ERA with which the right-hander entered the night. The Astros had some good cuts at the pitch early in the game, but a few loud outs -- including two on a line-drive double play that stifled a potential rally in the third -- helped Wright get to the middle innings relatively unscathed.

In the fifth, a leadoff double and a bunt single set up things for the top of the Astros’ order. The rain was at its heaviest around this time, and Wright -- whose arsenal thrives in calm, dry conditions -- had nowhere to hide. Jose Altuve lined an RBI single to right and George Springer followed with a two-run double in the same direction, cutting Boston’s lead to one.

A visit from pitching coach Carl Willis followed, but Wright was chased three batters later, when Marwin Gonzalez tied the game with a base hit. In a game that took nearly four hours to play, the seemingly safe lead was gone in an instant.

“Ball wasn’t moving as much because of the finger-pressure issue, but we had a five-run lead, I felt like I’ve got to be able to hold that to get a little deeper into the game and turn it over to the bullpen,” Wright said. “It got to the point to where I couldn’t keep anything dry. My pants were wet, my jersey was wet. It makes it a little bit harder to keep the feel.”

Red Sox manager John Farrell said there was concern before the game as to how the weather might affect Wright’s outing. Wright said he thought about changing his uniform between innings so he would have some dry material on which to wipe his hands. He also considered utilizing more fastballs and curveballs to spell the knuckler, which he throws well over 80 percent of the time.

Like the rain, which stayed around to the final out, Wright was stubborn, perhaps unwilling to stray too far from what has enabled him to produce a historic run since the end of last season.

“If I’m going to go down," the 31-year-old said, "I’m going to go down with my best pitch, which is still my knuckleball."

Reliever Matt Barnes helped keep it a tie game with an escape act in the fifth, but served up a tiebreaking, two-run homer in the sixth to Springer, his former teammate at the University of Connecticut. After the blast cleared the Green Monster, Barnes walked almost all the way to home plate, retrieved a new ball and then turned and faced the outfield for several seconds with his hands on his hips, just steps from where his college buddy was finishing up a home run trot.

The fact that it was Springer who got to him meant nothing to Barnes. Or so he said.

“Who it is doesn’t really matter," he said. "Giving up the home run, giving up the lead, that’s why I was so frustrated."

Barnes hung a 3-2 curveball to Springer. The Red Sox righty said he thought Springer would be looking fastball, and Barnes tried to throw the pitch for a strike. He admitted there would’ve been a different outcome if it was thrown in the dirt.

Between Wright’s inability to survive the conditions and Barnes’ inability to execute one big pitch, the Red Sox were all wet.