It feels like we’ve said “this is the lowest point of the season” at least 20 times this year when talking about the Boston Red Sox.
The defending World Series champions got swept in their doubleheader — sandwiched around a closed-door, players-only meeting — against the New York Yankees on Saturday and now have lost seven games overall, at the worst possible time. The Red Sox, in the midst of their worst losing streak since 2015, are 13.5 games behind the Yankees for first place in the American League East and 5.5 games out of the final AL wild card spot.
The offense isn’t coming up with timely hits, the starters aren’t going deep into games and the bullpen is, well, the Red Sox bullpen. Nothing is going well right now for Alex Cora’s club.
After Game 2, Cora seemed particularly distraught over the starting rotation’s struggles. And that’s understandable, as Boston’s starters gave up a combined 15 earned runs over just 13 1/3 innings in the first three games of the team’s four-game series in the Bronx.
“We’ve been talking about it all the time,” Cora said, per Pete Abraham of The Boston Globe. “They know it. These guys, like I’ve been saying all along, they understand that this team was built around the rotation. They haven’t been effective. There’s no hiding.”
As for Boston’s overall struggles, the Red Sox manager knows his team currently doesn’t belong in the same conversation as the league’s elite clubs.
“It’s not good right now,” said Cora, per Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe. “We’re not playing good baseball. It seems like it has flip-flopped from last year. We’ve got to get better.”
The players also seem to know the season could be on the brink of disaster.
Chris Sale: “We have to find a way. We have to grind through it. That’s where we’re at. We have to start from scratch here. We have two months to get our foot in the door.”
Mookie Betts: “We’re in the middle of a rut. We have to figure out a way to get out of it.”
Jackie Bradley Jr.: “We have to win. We have two months left. We have a really good squad. We have two months to figure it all out.”
As for the players-only meeting, it sounds like it was well overdue.
“When things come up, you have to address it,” Sale said, via Abraham. “We care about each other and obviously we’re not playing the way we want. We respect each other and we love each other. When something comes up and someone has something to say, we have enough respect and love for each other to get together as a group to go over some things.”
No one can accuse the Red Sox of not owning up to their failures. They know they haven’t been good enough, and they haven’t run from it. That said, words don’t do much when you’re over five games out of a playoff spot.
The Red Sox will look to turn things around Sunday night in their series finale against the Yankees. David Price will be activated off paternity leave and make his scheduled start.
