The Boston Red Sox are sliding. Losers of seven of their last 10 games, the Red Sox are now in danger of heading into the All-Star break on the outside of the American League Wild Card standings.
After watching his team drop their third straight game to the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday, manager Alex Cora gave an honest assessment of what he believes to be the issue.
“We’re not playing good baseball right now,” Cora said, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “A lot of mistakes, you know, and it’s costing us games. We need to start playing better baseball if we want to be the team that we envisioned in Spring Training.”
While the Red Sox’s struggles can be traced back to the beginning of July — they are 4-9 in the month — Cora believes the sloppiness that has come up in their current series with the Rays is what they cannot afford to allow happen.
“We had a great weekend, I’m not going to blast them,” Cora said. “But, you got to keep playing. No one is going to feel sorry for you, for your injuries, for who’s playing, whatever. You’ve got to show up every day, and we’ve been very sloppy lately, and we’ve got to get better.”
On the injury front, Boston has received good news in recent days. Chris Sale returned Tuesday looking like his old self, while Nathan Eovaldi and Garrett Whitlock are expected to return to the team this weekend to take on the New York Yankees. Rich Hill and Michael Wacha should be next in line after that, as they’ve each started throwing bullpen sessions.
Things can get better for Boston, but the Red Sox won’t be able to afford to sit and wait for them to. They’ll have to bounce back quickly if they hope to get back into the AL Wild Card standings before the All-Star break. They can do so with a win versus the Rays on Thursday night from Tropicana Field, where first pitch is scheduled for 7:10 p.m. ET following an hour of pregame coverage on NESN.
