The Boston Red Sox suffered five straight losses entering Wednesday’s game against the Detroit Tigers.
The starting rotation has gotten a lot of blame, and Garrett Richards calling this the worst season of his career after Tuesday’s series opening loss just piled on to that sentiment.
Manager Alex Cora has expressed consideration into tweaking the rotation, as Red Sox starters only once in their last eight games managed to go more than four innings with a collective ERA up to 8.47.
Still, he see’s the real issue to be the “stuck” offense.
“I think, you know, we can talk about the pitching, and all that, obviously we need more from those guys, but one thing is we need to do a better job offensively,” Cora told reporters Wednesday.
The manager feels his team hasn’t been themselves since a series against the Oakland Athletics before the All-Star break.
But with both sides struggling and first place in the division slipping out of their grasp, the issues have come to a head.
“We won a lot of games — a lot of close games,” Cora said. “But offensively, I think we’re stuck right now. We haven’t done a good job staying in the zone, when we swing in the zone, we’re not doing damage. With men in scoring position we haven’t been great. So there’s a combination of a lot of stuff. But at the same time we know we can hit. We know we got guys that are capable of it. But right now we’re just gonna find a way to grind through it until we find it again. It doesn’t matter if you feel good or you don’t feel good at the plate that day you got to find a way to contribute.”
Boston’s bats seemed to be turning things around in the second game against the Tigers, with J.D. Martinez going yard for an early lead and Kiké Hernández going back-to-back with Jarren Duran later on.
