“Obviously the road trip didn’t kind of go how we wanted,” Trevor Story said as he stood in the Fenway clubhouse on Friday afternoon.
The Red Sox left for their longest trip of the year on a five-game winning streak, and extended it to six games in their series opener in Seattle. They went 2-6 the rest of the way, and returned home on a five-game losing streak.
Yet despite how much these 40-42 Red Sox have fallen down, they maintain that good things are coming.
“(We were) playing good ball, I feel like, for a sustained amount of time before that,” Story continued, “so we’re not far. It might– kind of sometimes feels like we’re far away.”
“In terms of the mood of the team, I think there’s a lot of belief in what we’re capable of doing,” chief baseball officer Craig Breslow told the Herald.
The verdict on the Rafael Devers trade will take years, but the immediate results are as expected:
The Red Sox are a far less productive team at the plate without him. They entered Friday averaging 3.1 runs per game since the trade, nearly two full runs less than they did with Devers. It’s far from the only reason the Red Sox have fallen under .500 again and dropped five in a row, but it’s a driving force in their ongoing struggles to keep their heads above water.
The buzzwords on this team are consistency and inconsistency.
“There’s been inconsistency to our play across all aspects,” Breslow said. “We put up good at-bats and we don’t pitch, or we pitch really well and we’re not scoring runs. Or we’re pitching really well and scoring some runs but we’re not playing defense or we’re not running the bases… The hitting is always going to kind of go up and down, but we need to be able to rely on pitching and defense to keep us in games every day.”
“Consistency is what we need to dial in on a daily basis, with the defense, the base running,” Story said.
Then, in a sentiment loaded with Devers subtext, Story opined, “Putting together the big swing throughout the game, I think it doesn’t have to always be the big swing, and I think we can find ways to win games, whether it’s small-ball or using our speed. I think we can just do a little better job of that… Obviously losing Raffy, his presence and his power, and with (Alex Bregman) down right now, we gotta find different ways.”
Out of sync
There is an irony to all of this for Story, who missed most of the last two seasons due to injuries. Now he’s finally, not just healthy, but heating up at the plate; after batting .158 with a .432 OPS in 25 games last month, he entered Friday hitting .274 with a .771 OPS in 21 June games. Coming into the Blue Jays series, Story’s 44 double plays turned was tied for second among MLB shortstops.
But his team is still struggling.
“It’s frustrating,” the veteran shortstop told the Herald. “The inconsistency is probably the most frustrating part. We’ve shown flashes of it over like, a 10-game or 14-game stretch, but it’s about stopping the bleeding.”
“It’s been tough, but you know, baseball’s tough,” Story said.” We feel like we’re gonna be who we’re supposed to be at the end of the year.”
Originally Published:
