The bravado was gone, replaced by hints of desperation.
"I ain’t prepared to go home yet," said Xander Bogaerts, trying to soak in the Red Sox' 6-2 loss to the Orioles Thursday night. "Better start turning it around.”
All is not lost. The car keys still might be around here somewhere. The Red Sox are deadlocked with Seattle for the second Wild Card spot heading into the final weekend of the regular season, sitting one game up on Toronto.
Deep breaths.
But the rubber has officially met the road when it comes to this team's existence. The "nobody believed in us" and "we are (expletive) good" mantras the Red Sox were peppering us with from Jump St. are being lumped in the same pile as the "Perez Day" t-shirts.
It was one thing to be swept by the Yankees, but allowing the Orioles not follow the script - losing two of three to Baltimore - has put a serious dent in the hopes and dreams of the team that believed nobody thought they could do it.
Bogaerts may be the headliner right now when it comes to this team's struggles, but he certainly nailed the Red Sox' lot in life when saying, "It’s a bad time for us to be doing that, playing worse than the Orioles." Yup.
This was a team that combined for eight hits in two losses to a Baltimore team that ran out a starting pitcher with an ERA of 6.75 in the series finale, and posts a collective ERA of 5.77.
The Red Sox' run was always predicated on whether or not their key figures would be playing to the back of their baseball cards. Unfortunately for Alex Cora and Co., the good ones aren't and the hoping-for-better guys are.
There is absolutely time for the Red Sox to reclaim their narrative and resurface the circle-the-wagons mentality. Much like Baltimore, the Washington Nationals are a bad team with nothing but pride to play for.
But, as we learned in Camden Yards, Chris Sale was right - the Red Sox are playing against themselves. Unfortunately for them, they are losing.
There might be some moaning and groaning about having to play these pivotal contests without a designated hitter. And perhaps some are still looking at this swing through the nation's capital with some leftover overconfidence.
All of that is silly.
This comes down to whether or not the Red Sox are actually the team they have consistently told us they were. If Monday rolls around and the Sox are still playing, the naysayers can surface their mea culpas. If not? Get ready for the tidal wave of I-told-you-so's.
"Obviously, we have to win," Cora said. "We’ve been talking about winning series and we haven’t won the last two. This one wasn’t good at all. Obviously, the Yankee one wasn’t great. But I think we still control our own destiny right. Just show up tomorrow, play a good game, go over there to DC and we have to win. There’s no more, I don’t want to say excuses, we don’t make excuses, but we have to win out. We have to win this series and see where it takes us."
