Now Would Be A Really Good Time For Red Sox To Snap Out Of Their Slump
By Matthew Geagan, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- To say the Red Sox are slumping at the moment would be an understatement. The team lost in Detroit on Thursday, dropping their second of three to a mediocre Tigers team and falling to 1-5 on their current road trip. Boston has now lost six of its last seven games.
It hasn't been pretty since the All-Star break, with the Red Sox just 9-10 since the Midsummer Classic. The ugly baseball needs to end, too. Just ask manager Alex Cora, who absolutely unloaded on the team following Thursday's lifeless 8-1 defeat in Detroit.
"I can put it plain and simple for everybody, I don't think you guys have to ask too many questions today," Cora began his postgame press conference on Thursday. "We didn't pitch, we didn't play good defense, we didn't hit. It wasn't a good effort today. Where we're at right now, we have to get better. That's the bottom line.
"For us to pull this off, we have to play better baseball overall," he continued. "It looks like right now, we're a step slower, we're not moving well and I know we're in August and it's a grind, but we have an opportunity to play in October. We put ourselves in this situation. People can doubt us or they can feel like this team can do it, but bottom line, we have to show up every day and play better. We've been working so hard to get to this point."
The starting pitching has been massively inconsistent for much of the season, and has been exacerbated by the fact that Garrett Richards and Martin Perez can't seem to make it beyond the fourth inning. Perez recorded just four outs before departing from Thursday's game. The rotation may be getting Chris Sale back in the near future, but it's a mess at the moment. The only sure thing right now is Nathan Eovaldi, the only guy Cora would commit to when asked about the rotation on Thursday.
But the Sox offense has been slumping just as bad as the team's starters lately. Boston can't buy a clutch hit, hitting just .185 with runners in scoring position since the break. They went 1-for-9 in those scenarios on Thursday, and that one hit didn't even result in a run. Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers and J.D. Martinez all came up empty in their opportunities to drive in runs on Thursday.
Cora, however, said that the team's struggles are not a matter of effort.
"I just feel like we're getting punched and right now, it's tough. It's tough," he said. "That's the bottom line. I'm not saying we're not trying. Probably we're trying harder and that's why it's not happening. It's just a matter of we're not playing good baseball right now."
With that, all of the good mojo from the team's hot start has dried up. So has that lead in the AL East, as Boston now sits 1.5 games behind the Tampa Bay Rays in the standings. The Yankees and Blue Jays are both surging and sit just 4.5 games and 5.5 games, respectively, behind the Red Sox in the division.
At least the Red Sox have ample opportunity to turn it around against divisional foes in the coming weeks. That may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on which Red Sox team shows up. They have a massive four-game set against the Blue Jays in Toronto this weekend (including a doubleheader on Saturday), with the Jays winners of seven of their last 10. Three against the Rays at Fenway will follow, and after a three-game set against the Orioles in Boston, the Red Sox face the Yankees for three more in the Bronx.
This is the team's most important stretch of the season, a make-or-break two weeks. Whether the Red Sox rise or fall in the standings will be completely up to them.
"It all depends on us," Cora said Thursday. "We've done it before, we've played good baseball for a long, long time. We know we have a good baseball team. But like I said, we just have to play better. We have to keep working. We have to help these guys out from this slump and it's up to us, the coaches, everybody involved to get us going. That's the bottom line."