Debacle creates doubt
Sox put on a sad display
Turned out, it wasn’t the bright orange hats or nickname jerseys that most offended baseball purists last night. It was the way the Red Sox played the game.
Although the Fenway Park scoreboard insisted this was a first-place team, and the lingering narra- tive suggested the Sox were playing their best baseball of the season, all on-the-field evidence suggested otherwise.
Throws to second base skipped into the outfield, and throws from the outfield sailed to the backstop. It was bad from the very beginning, it just kept getting worse, and the Red Sox were pummeled for the second night in a row in a 16-3 loss to the Orioles.
If you’re wondering why there are still questions about whether this team is good enough to win the World Series, last night was a refresher course in its maddening inconsistency.
“The team’s not down,” starter Rick Porcello insisted. “We’re in first place by whatever it is. Three and a half games, four games, whatever it is. We got our (expletive) kicked two games in a row. So be it. We’ll bounce back tomorrow.”
Let’s be clear up top: The Red Sox are better than they showed last night. Advanced metrics actually rank them among the best defensive teams in baseball, yet they committed five errors, a season high. Porcello had won four straight starts, but he reverted to his old combination of allowing unearned runs while getting little run support to suffer his 15th loss. The offense had averaged 6.3 runs in its past nine games, but it scored just once after a second-inning homer.
The bright Players Weekend uniforms with funky nicknames were supposed to be a celebration of untraditional baseball fun, but the Sox didn’t have much to celebrate, and their only fun came when first baseman Mitch Moreland pitched a scoreless ninth.
Even that was the kind of fun that only happens when everything else is dismal.
Just two days ago, the Red Sox were sitting pretty with 16 wins in their past 20 games. Their record since the All-Star break had been even better than the 90-win Dodgers. They were coming off Doug Fister’s complete game on Tuesday and Drew Pomeranz’ gem against Corey Kluber on Wednesday.
But on Thursday, Chris Sale pitched an absolute dud in Cleveland, knocked around for seven runs in three innings, the second time this month the Indians had scored seven against the Cy Young favorite. Then came last night’s debacle, when the Red Sox couldn’t have looked worse against a sub-.500 Orioles team.
So, it seems the Red Sox ace might be vulnerable to the defending American League champs, who, if the season ended today, the Sox would face in a division series rematch of last year’s ALDS sweep.
And, it turns out, even when they’ve been blistering hot for nearly a month, the Sox are capable of falling apart two nights in a row, something no team can afford come October.
Is this too much hand-wringing for two games? Of course it is. And it would be ridiculous if not for July, when the Red Sox had a losing record for an entire month, and the start of the season, when they struggled to stay above .500 for a month and a half. It was hard to feel good about the team then, and it’s hard to feel good about them after a game like last night.
“You never like (blowouts) regardless of what kind of streak you’re in or the brand of baseball you’re playing for an extended period of time,” manager John Farrell said. “The last two nights have been tough. They’ve been rough, and they haven’t been indicative of the way this team has played since the trading deadline. So, the sooner we can put this behind us and get back to playing a complete game on all sides of it, we need to do that.”
Most troubling were the errors. It was the Red Sox’ first five-error game since 2001, and they’ve lost four of the five games in which they committed three or more errors this year. The Red Sox’ 86 errors this season are fifth most in baseball and 10 more than they had all of last season.
Errors are a bad way to measure a team’s true defensive ability, and in this case, they’re not representative of the Red Sox ability in the field. But they do suggest an occasional sloppiness, especially at shortstop where Xander Bogaerts just committed his 15th error of the season, putting him right among a large group that’s chasing Tim Anderson for the most in baseball.
Errors are easy to dismiss until there’s a night like when they prove so costly. And back-to-back ugly losses are easy to forgive when a team’s in first place, until those losses come in a best-offive playoff series.
Games like last night make you shake your head in August, but they send you home in October.