The Red Sox head into their series finale against the Orioles - and also into the season's second month - with an uneasy feeling.
Alex Cora's club is 6 1/2 games behind the Yankees for first-place in the American League East, carrying the fifth-worst offense (OPS-wise) in all of baseball.
The latest dagger came in the form of a 2-1, walk-off loss at the hands of the (gulp) Orioles, marking the eighth time in the Red Sox' last 12 games they have totaled two or fewer runs.
Repeat: Eight games. Two or fewer runs.
Adding to the pain is that while all of this is happening, this is a club with really good pitching. How else could they have actually won four of those dozen games? For example, Nathan Eovaldi now has a 2.51 ERA and the Red Sox are 2-3 in games he has pitched.
So, what to do?
Well, the first order of business is to look at where the offensive holes are. Here is where the Red Sox' rank at these respective positions in terms of OPS ...
First base: Last (.344).
Second base: 21st (.558).
Catcher: 25th (.451).
Right field: 25th (.467).
Center field: 21st (.561).
Left field: 20th (.653)
(The good news? The Red Sox have the second-best offensive production out of the shortstop spot. If that doesn't make you even more uneasy about life without Xander Bogaerts, than you aren't living in reality.)
To date, the most notable "fix" came in the form of Franchy Cordero's promotion and implementation as a first base option. OK. It's something.
As for other potential upgrades sitting at Triple-A, the Red Sox could take another whirl with Jarren Duran, who is suddenly hitting .391 with a 1.090 with a renewed focus on hitting line-drives instead of homers.
Feel-good story - and prolific home run hitter - Ryan Fitzgerald continues to produce, hitting .306 with a 1.064 OPS while moving all around the diamond (including recent workouts at first base).
And then there is Triston Casas.
The big first baseman is hitting .250 with an .828 OS and four homers. He finally came out of a rough 1-for-17 stretch with a three-hit game Saturday. The struggle has also been real against lefty pitching, managing just a 3-for-22 clip.
The Red Sox simply want to keep seeing Casas face near-major-league pitching on a regular basis as much as possible. The images of Michael Chavis and Jarren Duran being exposed to big-league scouting reports still lingers in the Red Sox decision-makers psyches, helping pump the breaks on Casas, a bit.
Unfortunately for the Red Sox, those names are they have to draw from while waiting to see if the likes of Trevor Story and Kiké Hernandez can start playing to the backs of their baseball cards, with the continued hope that the better versions of Bobby Dalbec, Jackie Bradley Jr., Christian Arroyo and Christian Vazquez somehow emerge.
May is still the waiting game section of the season. In this division, however, too much patience might lead the kind of problem there will be no solution for.
