Chalk it up to the excellence of Chris Sale if want. That's the tidy sort of bow that you could very well wrap up this 5-0 Red Sox loss to the Braves in.
Sale faces his old team, throws six shutout innings, strikes out 10 and then talks about his appreciation for the entire Red Sox organization once again.
For the lefty, his played out - and has been playing out - exactly has he had hoped.
"Yeah, we won a championship together, Sale told the media after watching his ERA drop under 3.00 (2.95). “I watched Rafael Devers make his Major League debut and turn into a $300 million superstar. I was watching Kutter Crawford at FGCU. That guy is like a little brother to me. Even Nick Pivetta, he lived in Southwest Florida and we had an entire offseason together. The list goes on and on. I could sit here and talk about [Red Sox manager Alex Cora] for the next three hours. It is different."
Sale added, "I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again until I run out of breath. I love those guys.I always will. The memories I made with them were good and bad. On the flip side of that, this is a competitive game and we have a job to do."
The less sexy storyline for the Red Sox is that while Sale was doing his job, they weren't doing theirs. And with or without the dominance displayed by starting pitchers such as this one, the lack of production from Alex Cora's crew has presented an unnerving image.
The manager sees it. And so do those still trying to decipher if the Red Sox can hang in this American League East race.
To highlight what Cora is preaching, the Red Sox have now scored two or fewer runs in 14 games, losing all but two of them. Five of the these have come in the month of May, which has only seen the Sox play seven times.
In other words, this offense is proving that no matter how good your pitching is - and, up until Nick Pivetta's rough return from the injured list Wednesday night, it has been really good - this has to be at two-way street.
For a more eye-opening reality check, understand the Red Sox have scored 21 runs in May thus far and 15 of them have come in two games.
During this stretch, the newcomers who were supposed to breath some life into the Triston Casas-less world have had their issues, with the combination of Garrett Cooper, Dominic Smith and Vaughn Grissom going a combined 8-for-55. And two of the most important pieces of the puzzle, Tyler O'Neill and Wilyer Abreau, have also hit rough patches. The middle-of-the-order duo have gone a combined 7-for-46 in May, with each striking out 11 times.
Also this month, only three teams in baseball have worse batting averages with runners in scoring position than the Red Sox (.188).
Sale is gone, and so is less-than-encouraging road trip. Now the Red Sox need to figure out solutions to what has become their biggest non-trainers table-problem: Scoring runs.