The Boston Red Sox, after a bumpy start, used a June surge to help put them firmly into position for one of the American League Wild Card spots.
But some of the things that helped propel that hot streak have since disappeared. And regardless of what moves Chaim Bloom makes between now and August 2, there are some internal fixes that need to be made.
Boston’s loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday was at times a clinic in bad defensive baseball, with the Red Sox coughing up a lead because of defensive miscues. Asked Wednesday during his weekly appearance on WEEI’s “Merloni, Fauria and Mego” about deadline needs, Cora instead pointed to fixing the current group’s defense.
“I think one of the things as a team – and I hate talking about specific positions – we’ve got to get back to playing better defense," Cora said. I don’t know how we’re going to accomplish that. Obviously, Kiké is banged up, he’s going to be out for a while. Whatever personnel we have, we have to play better defensively. We’ve been playing sloppy defense for the last 10-12 days. I know we’ve got a lot of moving parts, a lot of new guys on the roster, but whatever we do we’ve got to play better defensively.
“Also, I think offensively we’re close to who we are but obviously with the guys banged up, you still have to find ways to score runs. We were very athletic early on this season, that’s something I like having on our roster, so be more athletic offensively. When we got rolling there for a month and a half, we were really good at stealing bases, advancing from first to third, scoring from first base and if we can get a little more athletic, that would be great for us.”
Indeed, injuries are a big concern for the Red Sox. Not only are they planning on leaning on players who have missed extended time this season, but they also don’t know how effective some players, like Hernandez, will be upon returning.
So, depth obviously is a need. And though Cora declined to name specific positions with Bobby Dalbec struggling adding someone who can play first base would be helpful, as would another arm.
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