1. What is wrong with team?
How much time do you have? And let us count the ways.
There are the one-run games and their appalling 6-15 record in them.
There are the MLB-leading 10 extra-inning games – and their 4-6 record in them – and the walk-off losses: seven, including back-to-back games in Milwaukee this week and two in a row when the Tigers handed them their first sweep of the season, on the previous road trip.
There are the bullpen struggles, offensive droughts, and errors, all of which seem to come in bunches, and how unlucky this team seems to be. They’re slugging .419, a mark skewed by a few high-scoring games, and well below their .446 expected slugging percentage (xSLG). According to MLB Deserve-To-Win-O-Meter, an X account which uses Statcast’s expected outcomes to simulate how games should’ve gone, the Red Sox deserved to win seven of their losses. The Red Sox are No. 28 on TeamRankings.com’s MLB Luck Rankings, only ahead of the Orioles (19-36) and Rockies (9-47).
“I feel like every day we go out there and we’re doing our best,” Alex Cora told WEEI on Thursday. “It hasn’t happened for us. You look at the season and having conversations with some people this morning, I was like, ‘It’s a weird one, right?’ because it feels like you’re in every game but it’s not going your way.”
There are Garrett Crochet’s excellent starts, one of the only consistent bright spots, going to waste, and the gaping hole left by Alex Bregman’s injury (though they weren’t winning consistently before, either).
There is the positional musical chair mess involving Rafael Devers, Kristian Campbell, Marcelo Mayer, and countless others, and the fact that outfielder Roman Anthony looks more ready than any Red Sox prospect in recent history, with no room for him to get the call.
There’s the energy and fight, which seems to have gone out of this team like an electric factory doused by a baffling power outage, and the frustration that there don’t seem to be any clear solutions, never mind quick fixes.
2. Where is Roman Anthony?
Answer: leading off Thursday’s lineup. (No, you didn’t miss another one-run Red Sox loss; mercifully, they had Thursday off.)
Baseball’s No. 1 prospect still hasn’t gotten the call.
There’s no denying the Red Sox are in a tough spot, in more ways than one. They’re on their first five-game losing streak of the season, plummeting down the standings like a piano falling out of a cartoon sky, and desperate for offensive production. Anthony, meanwhile, entered Thursday hitting .318 with a .450 on-base percentage and .528 slugging percentage in Worcester. It feels like he’s hitting a home run over 115 mph every day, in part because the big-league lineup is simultaneously doing painfully little.
“He’s not knocking at the door, he’s knocking it down,” Cora said on WEEI.
Therein lies the problem, the thinnest of tightropes, and the most precarious balancing act.
Triple-A isn’t the majors. If it was, every minor leaguer would be an instant and consistent success upon making their debut. There are almost always growing pains, as Anthony’s fellow ‘Big Three’ prospects, Campbell and Mayer, are proving.
The pressure is already higher here than in most markets. For the No. 1 in all of baseball? Forget about it. Factor in the current state of the Sox, and the milquetoast and malaise of their last several seasons, and the need for a young superstar savior is sky-high.
“We need to be mindful of the environment that Roman would be coming into and the pressure that we’d be putting on a 21-year-old, in the midst of a losing streak, to come up and save the team,” chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show” on Thursday.
The onus isn’t on Anthony to save the Red Sox. He isn’t Michael Jordan, almost singlehandedly saving the Toon Squad from the MonStars. The absence of Anthony isn’t causing these Red Sox struggles, and his call-up won’t be the cure-all.
3. Were Sox prepared for ‘Big Three’ prospects?
Anthony, Campbell and Mayer were all in big-league camp for nearly all of spring training. Each was a candidate for the Opening Day roster, and the expectation was that even if none of them made the cut for Day 1, they’d all get the call before spring turned to summer.
Yet while Breslow continues to maintain a need to ensure the prospects get consistent playing time in the majors, his roster isn’t built for it. The Red Sox opened second base for Campbell by shoving Rafael Devers off the field when they signed Bregman (which, in turn, blocked Masataka Yoshida from contributing at designated hitter). Remember when Vaughn Grissom was supposed to be the everyday second baseman?
Trevor Story’s contract isn’t Breslow’s fault, but it’s easily the most frustrating holdover from the Chaim Bloom era. It’s unclear how Mayer would’ve come up if Bregman hadn’t gotten hurt.
Above all, the Red Sox outfield is full to the brim. Rather than trading Jarren Duran or Wilyer Abreu, two lefty bats who had enormous ‘24 campaigns, the Red Sox stood pat this offseason, so there’s no room for the lefty Anthony. Likewise for the righty Jhostynxon ‘The Password’ Garcia, who’s putting together a breakout season. Unranked in prospect guru Keith Law’s 2025 preseason MLB Top 50, Garcia earned the No. 46 spot in Law’s latest rankings this week. In his first six Triple-A games since earning a promotion last week, Garcia has already hit two home runs with exit velocities of at least 106 mph.
Perhaps all teams are, to some extent, making it up as they go along, plugging holes and taking chances in a game in which nothing is ever guaranteed. But for a franchise that spent the last few years touting these prospects as the future, they don’t seem to know how to actualize that future.
4. How have Sox not been shut out ?
For a team with as many offensive problems as this one, it’s almost funny that they’re the last team standing.
5. Is Alex Cora worried about his job?
The Red Sox skipper told “WEEI Afternoons” he was not.
It’s hard to see the Red Sox parting ways with Cora less than a year after ownership inked him to a three-year extension, which made him the second-highest paid manager in MLB history, last July.
Yet something needs to change, and fast. Perhaps the Red Sox should take Manny Ramirez up on his offer to be a hitting coach.
6. Will Alex Bregman opt out?
This is a ways down the road, but it’s interesting to think about.
Before his quad injury last Friday, Bregman seemed like a lock to opt out of the three-year contract he signed in February. Hitting .299 with 11 home runs and 17 doubles in 51 games, the reigning Gold Glove third baseman would almost certainly have longer-term offers in his second round of free agency.
Now, however, he’s expected to miss at least a month.
7. Could Sox be sellers at trade deadline?
I can already see the “You’re overreacting” and “It’s only May” emails flooding my inbox with this one, but let’s call a spade a spade. No matter how the first two games in Atlanta go this weekend, the Red Sox will still be two games under .500 at best when the calendar flips to June on Sunday.
If they keep going down this road, it’s entirely possible that Breslow does what Bloom failed to do at the ‘22 deadline: get under the Competitive Balance Threshold so that another disappointing, postseason-less Sox sundae doesn’t come with a luxury tax bill as the rotten cherry on top.
With a roster full of players still under club control, as well as several players whose contracts don’t include no-trade clauses, the options are nearly endless.
