Where do the Boston Red Sox go from here?
The Sox returned home thoroughly demoralized after a 1-6 trip that saw some of the sloppiest play of a lackluster season. The team continues to find new lows after we think they’ve hit rock bottom.
On Saturday, the Sox committed three errors in an 8-0 loss. Hanley Ramirez looked disinterested in left field while Sox hitters looked overmatched in the major league debut of Chi Chi Gonzalez.
That led to a veteran’s summit meeting on Sunday morning as Manager John Farrell called David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, Ramirez, Pablo Sandoval and Mike Napoli together to discuss the lack of aggressiveness shown by a team with a higher payroll than any other in Red Sox history.
Meetings are considered a success if a team shows improvement in the innings that follow. That wasn’t the case Sunday as Sandoval committed two errors and the Sox gave away a ninth-inning lead for their third straight loss.
For 51 games we’ve been hearing that the Sox will pull out of it. We’ve been told that veterans will return to their true form, that Boston is about to go on a roll, that there is no need for drastic changes.
What we’ve seen is a team short on emotion and shorter on clutch hits. Boston went 3 for 14 with runners in scoring position Sunday. The only spark they’ve gotten has come from the big-league debut of 22-year old lefty Eduardo Rodriguez, a 5-1 victory on Thursday.
Major league players and executives like to talk about “turning the page,” pointing to the future and to what’s next in a marathon season. The Sox can only hope that June is better than May, where the Sox scored the fewest runs in all of baseball.
The only saving grace through all of this is that the Red Sox are playing in a truly horrible division. Boston came home having lost 7 of 10 games – and only dropped one game in the AL East standings in that stretch.
On Monday the Sox got the day off with a rainout to be played on Wednesday as part of a doubleheader. Yes, right now they’re just four games out of first – but that four-game difference would put them nine games back in either of the other American League divisions.
Will this be the case all year? Will the Sox be able to sleepwalk through months of sub-par baseball only to wake up and make a late push into the postseason?
Probably not. The team needs to change its approach at the plate, execution on the mound and focus on the field.
They’ve tried meetings. Ortiz was benched and Allen Craig demoted to Pawtucket. Pitchers have been taken out of the rotation. Farrell finally gave in to the frustration of the season and was ejected from a ballgame for the first time Friday.
And yet the beat – and the beatings – go on. After a last-place finish in 2014, the Sox begin June looking up at the rest of the AL East. The four-game gap between worst and first in the division belies the fact that this team has shown no sign of being a contender in a baseball season that began with far higher expectations of success.
Tom Caron is the studio host for the Red Sox broadcast on NESN. His column appears in the Portland Press Herald on Tuesdays.
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