BOSTON — After the Red Sox dropped their third consecutive game to the Chicago White Sox, manager John Farrell gave a simple, strong and accurate assessment of his team’s recent performance.
“We’ve been slapped in the face right from the get-go,” Farrell said after Wednesday’s 9-2 loss at Fenway Park. “Three consecutive nights, we find ourselves down multiple runs early in the ballgame. Bottom line is we’ve got to do a better job of pitching. And that’s not focusing on the starters — that’s focusing on everyone.”
Through the first three games of their current four-game series, the Red Sox have scored 14 runs. Viewed alone, that’s a perfectly respectable three-game total. The White Sox, however, have blown it out of the water.
The visitors have racked up 11 first-inning runs and 28 in all as their margin of victory has grown from two, to five, and finally to seven Wednesday in the largest blowout of this decidedly lopsided series.
“We’ve been inconsistent,” said right-hander Rick Porcello, who lasted just two innings Wednesday, giving up six runs on 10 hits in one of his worst starts of the season. “We’ve been through some stretches where you make some good pitches, you have some good games, we have some big innings — whatever it is. And then, you don’t make good pitches. And that doesn’t work.
“You’ve got to be consistent. If you’re trying to drive a fastball into a guy, you’ve got to get it in. If you’re trying to throw a breaking ball in the dirt, you’ve got to get it in the dirt. And that’s it.”
Porcello’s start followed one in which Wade Miley allowed five first-inning runs and another in which Joe Kelly surrendered four before recording his third out. The three-game losing streak dropped the Red Sox, who face White Sox ace Chris Sale in Thursday’s series finale, to 2-11 since the All-Star break.
Of those 13 games, Boston has held a lead in just five.
To first baseman Mike Napoli, who homered and drove in both Red Sox runs Wednesday, “it sucks.”
“We’re getting some good pitching, and we don’t hit,” Napoli explained. “We hit, we don’t get good pitching. It seems to be falling on different days where we do the opposite. It’s been tough. We went into the All-Star break playing good baseball, and we’ve been struggling lately.”
The most frustrating part of the team’s recent struggles — and, really, its struggles all season — is that its roster is loaded with proven major leaguers who should make the Red Sox a tough out. They showed the potential of being just that before the break, when they went 15-9 over the final 24 games of the season’s unofficial first half.
Lately, though, that team has been nowhere to be found.
“Guys are capable of more,” Farrell said, “and we need to be better.”
Thumbnail photo via Michael Dwyer/Associated Press
