"We still believe very, very strongly in this team. ... Your rational brain says baseball needs to be evaluated over the long-term. Eight games in is not the time you want to draw conclusions, but your heart says, 'How do we help the group? What do we need to do? What are we missing? How do we turn this thing around?' But we have a bunch of good players who are not performing up to their potential right now, and that's going to turn."
That was Craig Breslow on NESN in the midst of what would be yet another Red Sox loss, this one landing Sunday afternoon as an 8-6 thud at the hands of the Padres at Fenway Park.
The takeaway: The Red Sox chief baseball officer and his team are in the most awkward of April places.
As much as everyone wants Breslow to shower this club with fixes after its 2-7 start, such maneuvers aren't made in the first few weeks of any season. It was former A's executive Billy Beane who advised a young Theo Epstein that the first month or so should always be used to evaluate what you have and then adjust accordingly. Sounds good. Doesn't feel great.
While Breslow is correct in the assessment that eight - or now nine - games isn't the time to draw conclusions, it is a fair amount of games to start sifting through some realities.
Breslow and Co., and others, looked as this team and projected a certain path. That road certainly wasn't supposed to lead the Red Sox to a five-game deficit in the American League East after just three series. And the notion that they were going to own the second-worst run differential in Major League Baseball after that stretch certainly wasn't on the front office's bingo card.
The Sox have the fourth-most strikeouts of any team that has played nine games. Their OPS with runners in scoring position is fourth-worst in MLB. It's a team that owns the second-fewest runs in the majors. And their bread-and-butter, starting pitching, has produced a combined 5.19 ERA, a number better than only four teams. Also, speaking of run prevention, only two other clubs have more errors than the Sox's nine.
New third baseman Caleb Durbin owns the worst OPS in baseball (.205), with the player just to his left Trevor Story not that far behind (.333). They aren't alone in their early-season downturns, with everyone but Wilyer Abreu, Connor Wong and Masa Yoshida carrying an OPS of .718 or worse.
Yes, to Breslow's point, one would think that these are a bunch of good players who aren't playing up to their potential. But that statement and approach are built on a whole lot of projections, many of which lack a proper safety net if the plan isn't the right one.
That's what the Red Sox are figuring out now.
It's one thing to experience the kind of slump Story is currently enduring in the team's No. 2 spot, but if sifting through the roster to find a logical adjustment is a challenge this early in the season, then that's an issue. Roman Anthony at the top spot? Sure. But if not Story after him, which righty hitter would one put there? The answer is there is no answer. It's why Cora might have to pivot to simply put his best chance of getting production, regardless of lefty or righty, at the top of the order. That's Abreu. That's Yoshida. Mix in Willson Contreras in the No. 3 or 4 spot and go from there.
It's an imperfect solution for what has become an undeniable imperfect team.
The painful part on Sunday was that much of what ailed the Red Sox leading into the series finale wasn't part of the problem. They scored six runs while going a respectable 5-for-11 with runners in scoring position. But while some uneasy feelings were pushed down, others popped up, with the $130 man, Ranger Suarez, squandering a four-run lead by allowing four of his own before exiting after four innings.
When a team invests that much into a player, whether it's Suarez, or, let's just say, someone like Pete Alonso or Alex Bregman, it is expected that that player will be more part of the solution than part of the problem. Through the lefty's first two starts, that hasn't been the case.
There is still time to figure it all out. The Red Sox did when they started 2011 at 2-7 and finished August with the best record in baseball (before the historic collapse in the final month). The difference? There was far less room for interpretation with that team. They were good, and they knew they were good. And while Breslow and the players will scream from the mountaintops that they should be in the World Series conversation, a lot of convincing needs to be done.
It is early. But wins and losses are wins and losses, no matter the month. As bad as this is, it's even worse to be reminded of that in September.
