Struggling Red Sox seeking answers amid slow start
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The Boston Red Sox hit a new low on Monday, as they were blasted 16-1 by the Tampa Bay Rays in Tampa to continue a cold stretch.
The loss dropped Boston to 8-10 - a slow start to a season that came with high hopes after top off-season acquisitions in third baseman Alex Bregman and pitchers Garrett Crochet and Walker Buehler were added to the fold.
For manager Alex Cora, there isn't one main issue sticking out either - meaning he has to navigate multiple obstacles to get the team back on track.
“The defence has been bad, the offence has been bad and we’ve been inconsistent pitching-wise,” Cora told reporters after Monday's loss. “Those are the three pillars of baseball and we haven’t been good.”
The up-and-down campaign has featured a 1-4 start, a five-game winning streak in which they exceeded 13 runs scored in two separate games, and a 2-6 stretch over the past week and a half that culminated in the listless effort against the Rays.
“It seemed like there was a team that was prepared for the other one and one that wasn’t prepared, and that goes top to the bottom. That wasn’t a good night for us,” Cora told NESN in Tampa. “I’ll take the blame because it seemed like our team wasn’t ready to go.”
Team defence - which was supposed to be bolstered by Bregman, a Gold Glover for third basemen a year ago - has been bad early on, with their 20 errors as a team pacing the league by a wide margin (the Pittsburgh Pirates and Colorado Rockies are tied for second at 16).
Outside of a surprising start by outfielder Wilyer Abreu at the dish, the team has struggled to hit as well. Only four players (Abreu, Bregman, Trevor Story and Kristian Campbell) have an OPS+ above 100 (meaning they're providing above-league-average production at the plate).
Triston Casas, Jarren Duran and Rafael Devers have all produced far below their career averages in the early going this season. Devers currently leads the majors in strikeouts with 27, which has heavily influenced the Red Sox leading the majors as a team in strikeouts with 179, 10 ahead of the next closest team.
“We’ve been consistently bad the last 10 days,” Cora said.
Tanner Houck, who was the recipient of the pummeling at the hands of the Rays' hitters on Monday, leads the league with 19 earned runs allowed and sports an unsightly 9.16 earned-run average through four starts.
Pitching help is on the horizon though, per MLB.com's Ian Browne, as two members of the starting rotation - Brayan Bello and Lucas Giolito - and dependable bullpen arm Liam Hendriks are all expected to return from injury in the coming days.
As Browne reports, Bello, who has pitched more than 150 innings each of the last two seasons for Boston, will make his final rehab start on Wednesday as he continues to work back from shoulder inflammation that slowed him in Spring Training.
Bello is expected to return to the big-league club on April 21.
Hendriks, 36, is slated to make one more rehab appearance on Wednesday before joining the Red Sox on Friday. Hendriks joined the Red Sox in February 2024, but has yet to debut for the team. He last pitched on June 9, 2023, after recovering from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but had Tommy John surgery after just five appearances that year.
Giolito is also waiting to make his Red Sox debut after joining the team in Dec. 2023, as he was forced to have an internal brace procedure on his elbow in Spring Training a year ago. He is expected to join the Red Sox near the end of April, per Browne.
One thing working for the Red Sox early on is the struggles of the rest of the American League East.
The slow start would've figured to put them in a deep hole given the historic competitiveness of the division, but they sit only two games behind the New York Yankees entering play on Tuesday.