Alex Cora knows the Red Sox are going to need all hands on deck over the final two-plus months of Major League Baseball's regular season.
Boston is poised to be in a dog fight for a playoff berth. As it stands, seven teams have a realistic shot at grabbing one of the American League's three Wild Card spots. The Red Sox had held onto one of those spots for some time, but a 5-12 mark in July to date has Boston on the outside looking in at the postseason picture.
Prior to Sunday's ugly loss to the Yankees in New York, Cora used one word to sum up his team's first half of the season: inconsistent. The Red Sox manager knows the script needs to be flipped in the second half, and that only will be achieved if Boston's role players level up.
"We've been very inconsistent offensively during the first part of the season," Cora told reporters, per MLB.com. "We hit our stride (sometimes) and then lately -- injuries or not, we should be better than that.
"Like I have been saying all along, the three guys have been amazing throughout the first part of the season. We need more. We need other guys to step up, get good at-bats, finish at-bats and all that stuff. We haven't done that, so far, this season."
The Red Sox better hope some time off serves the team well, as the competition will be fierce upon returning from the All-Star break. Boston is set to square off with a pair of Wild Card contenders -- the Toronto Blue Jays and the Cleveland Guardians -- in consecutive series following the mid-season pause.
