Two ugly realities sink Red Sox in series-opening loss to Pirates

BOSTON -- If we can make any grand conclusion on the 2023 Boston Red Sox after four games, it is this: The team plays an exciting brand of baseball. 

With an average of just under 16 combined runs per game, and with 18 combined home runs, the Red Sox have been many things thus far, but they have not been boring.

Unfortunately for them, "exciting baseball games" don't show up in the standings, where the Red Sox are just 2-2 through four games. And Monday night's loss, which was a very winnable game, exposed two issues that figure to prevent the team from truly contending for the playoffs this season.

Bad Starting Pitching

This one is no secret, as the starting rotation was a question mark even before Brayan Bello and Garrett Whitlock were set to start the season on the injured list. Relying on the soon-to-be-37-year-old Corey Kluber and the oft-injured Chris Sale to carry the staff is not a recipe for success.

Yet with those injuries, Kutter Crawford was sent out to the mound to start Monday night's game. It went as poorly as possible.

To be fair, Crawford was the victim of some bad luck in the first inning, when a one-out bloop fell in shallow center field outside of the reach of a diving Kiké Hernandez before Rafael Devers lost a sky-high popup in shallow left field in the next at-bat. Crawford got Carlos Santana to pop out for the second out, but he allowed an RBI single to Ke'Bryan Hayes and a two-RBI double to Canaan Smith-Njigba to put the Red Sox in an early 3-0 hole.

He gave up a solo home run to Bryan Reynolds with two outs in the second, and a leadoff walk to Santana in the third came back to bite him, as Jack Suwinski laced an RBI single to allow Pittsburgh to tie the game at 5-5 in the third.

Crawford was at 72 pitches through three innings, and he wasn't particularly effective. Yet with a bullpen that had pitched 10 innings over the previous two days, Alex Cora tried to get one more inning out of his starter. It backfired. 

Jason Delay led off the fourth inning with a laser over the Green Monster, and Reynolds hit his second homer of the night two at-bats later, on an 88 mph cutter that split the plate.

Crawford's night was over after four innings, having allowed seven runs (all earned) on eight hits and a pair of walks as well as three homers.

It was grisly, and it was part of a problem that's hurt Boston in every game this season.

Red Sox starters now have a 12.91 ERA through four starts, by far the worst in the league. (Toronto ranks second at 10.80, and the A's at 10.00 are the only other team in double digits.)

Red Sox starters have allowed 10 homers, which is also most in the league, despite 10 teams having played one game more than Boston.

Sox starters also rank dead last in WHIP (2.28) and second-to-last in opponent's batting average (.371) while pitching the second-fewest innings of any team.

It's not good, and it likely won't get better enough to make a huge difference on the season. They haven't even had one full turn through the rotation, but it's not too early to look at the pieces of the rotation and make that determination.

It will get better, no doubt. But the hole they'll be climbing out of will be deep, and their best-case scenario might only be getting out of the bottom third of the league in that department.

"At one point," Cora said postgame, "we've got to pitch better."

Weak Bench

Despite the poor pitching performance from Crawford, the Red Sox still had opportunities to win this game. Alas, even that potent offense is lacking when it comes to options off the bench.

That issue reared its head a few times on Monday night.

The bottom of the fifth might have been too early for Cora to want to tap into his bench, but a two-out, bases-loaded situation for Connor Wong while the Red Sox trailed 7-5 had to have forced him to give it some thought. Instead, Wong took his at-bat, and he struck out swinging.

Likewise, Cora probably doesn't want to pinch-hit for Triston Casas and sink the young first baseman's confidence as he sets out to be an everyday player in the big leagues for the first time. That's especially true considering he curled one around the Pesky Pole in the first inning. 

But in the bottom of the sixth, Casas stepped to the plate with two outs and two on, after Adam Duvall had just cut Pittsburgh's lead to 7-6 with an RBI single. Casas, like Wong, struck out to end the inning and the threat. He's now 2-for-11 on the young season.

Cora did go to his bench for two pinch-hit spots in the ninth. The players he called upon were ... Raimel Tapia and Rob Refsnyder. Tapia hit for Arroyo, and Refsnyder hit for Wong. Tapia actually reached base on a dribbler to second base, but Refsnyder was overmatched by David Bednar and the 20 mph gap between his fastball and curveball, striking out on three pitches to end the game.

Realistically, there weren't many buttons for Cora to push. A bench with Tapia, Refsnyder, Yu Chang and Reese McGuire does not offer too many options for a manager to make a game-winning decision from the dugout. Having one or two more bats at the ready on any given night could turn games like Monday's from one-run losses into one-run wins. And that issue, much like the starting pitching, figures to be sticking around for the foreseeable future.

You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.