Reigning champion Red Sox limping to October

BOSTON >> Red Sox baseball boss Dave Dombrowski gave up on a fourth straight AL East title when he decided not to make a move at the trade deadline.

The players bowed out of the postseason race soon after.

One year after their recordsetting run to their fourth World Series in 15 seasons, the Red Sox are on their way toward missing the playoffs for the first time since 2015. After taking five of six leading up to the July 31 deadline from New York and Tampa Bay — the two teams Boston is chasing in the AL East — the defending champions won just three of their next 15 games.

Alex Cora, who led Boston to a franchise-record 108 wins in his first year as a major league manager, acknowledges there’s no more time to waste.

“It actually did feel like a playoff game,” he said after beating Cleveland this week to slow the slide. “If we want to make it, we’ve got to start our playoffs before anyone else.” It may already be too late. The Red Sox are closer to fourth than first, 17½ games out in the division and 7½ back in the wild-card race. They have just four more games against each the Yankees and Rays, and none against Cleveland or Oakland, who are also ahead of Boston in the wildcard standings.

Dombrowski conceded at the deadline that this team wasn’t going to catch the Yankees, and he said he didn’t want to give up a lot for a spare part that would get them into the one-game coin toss that is the wild-card round.

“If we were closer to first place, I would’ve been more open-minded,” he said. “I think if we’re going to make it, it’s going to be the guys that are in the clubhouse.”

The response from the clubhouse: losses in the next six games — eight straight in all — including a four-game sweep by the Yankees that allbut eliminated Boston from the postseason race.

Here are some other things that went wrong this season:

Last year’s moves all seemed to work out: Dombrowski acquired J.D. Martinez during spring training, added Steve Pearce in June and, as the deadline approached, Nathan Eovaldi and Ian Kinsler. Martinez finished fourth in AL MVP voting, Pearce was the World Series MVP, and Eovaldi was the Game 3 star who pitched six innings of relief in an 18-inning loss.

STEVEN SENNE — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The Red Sox’s Andrew Cashner, right, hands the ball to manager Alex Cora, left, during the second inning of a game against the Angels in Boston.