Make no mistake about it, as we enter the season’s second month, the Red Sox are in trouble
After their 4-3 loss to the Guardians on Friday night, the Sox find themselves 10 games under .500 for the first time since 2020, and a season-high five games out of a Wild Card berth.
Their ace, Garrett Crochet, hasn’t since April and doesn’t figure to be talking the major league mound until mid-June. The projected alpha of the lineup, Roman Anthony, still can’t swing a bat without experiencing pain in his right ring finger. The hitter that was supposed to anchor the No. 2 spot behind Anthony, Trevor Story, is out for a couple more months.
And five of the seven teams the Red Sox are looking to get right against in the coming days - the Guardians, Yankees, Rays, Blue Jays and Mariners - are currently eligible for the postseason.
The Red Sox will point to the obvious signs of optimism, with the lineup starting to show some semblance of production, and the pitching still being perceived as postseason-caliber. Even Brayan Bello got in on the about-face act against Cleveland, coming on in relief to keep his team hanging around with eight shutout innings (lowering his ERA as a bulk guy to 0.71).
But the hole has gotten pretty deep, particularly when it comes to digging out in time to actually buy at the trade deadline rather than sell.
One of the few saving graces? They can always refer to the 2024 Mets.
That club hit May 30 with an identical record as this Red Sox team, sitting at 23-33. New York was floundering, residing 6 1/2 games out of a Wild Card spot, with FanGraphs giving it just an 8.2 percent chance of making the postseason.
Then they had a team meeting. Then came Grimace, throwing out the first pitch, which paved the way to a seven-game win streak. After that, Jose Iglesias arrived with his team's anthem, “OMG.” Suddenly, the Mets rattled off a record of 35-18 in the next two months, best in all of baseball, allowing them to actually acquire useful pieces at the trade deadline instead of selling them off.
When it was all said and done, the Mets would go 67-40 since dropping to 10 games under .500, ultimately reaching the National League Championship Series.
So, it can be done.
But that doesn’t mean this is an apples-to-apples situation.
That Mets team had an MLB-best 44 come-from-behind victories. The Red Sox are sitting with six such wins. New York also didn’t have to try and fight for their lives in June against the kind of gauntlet the Sox are facing, which includes six of the top nine pitching staffs (ERA-wise) in baseball.
And while the Mets were fortunate to look back at that May 29 team meeting as a very real springboard to their success, relying on such a dynamic for this Red Sox team most likely wouldn’t be prudent. The more likely set of jumper cables for Chad Tracy’s crew would be the offense taking this improvement to another level, with some help from the front office.
With the understanding that making significant trades this time of year is the rarest of rarities, with the last meaningful deal made by the Red Sox in the season’s second month coming 23 years ago when Shea Hillenbrand went to Arizona for Byun-Hyung Kim. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
And because of this fork-in-the-road stretch, the schedule and standings have presented the Red Sox, that sort of desperation should be part of this current equation.
That Mets team a year ago answered the call not only with the purple mascot and hip-hopping infielder, but, more importantly, a team OPS in June (.871) that outshone every other club in baseball, hitting the second-most home runs in MLB over that span. Those are the kind of vibes the Red Sox truly need.
In other words, the Red Sox are going to need a whole lot more than the Hamburglar this time around.
