“It wasn’t a good day for us.”
Those were the words of Alex Cora following Thursday afternoon’s 5-3 loss to the We’re-Not-From-Sacramento-What-Are-You-Talking-About Athletics at Fenway Park, though they weren’t delivered for the reason you might think.
You might think that the walls are closing in, chests are getting tight and hearts are pounding inside the Boston clubhouse. But Cora? He’ll tell you he and everyone else in uniform remains cool as a cucumber.
“The days are the same,” Cora said nonchalantly on Thursday. “Nothing changes. The preparation is the same, and we just keep rolling.”
That’s the message.
Here’s the reality.
That loss, combined with a Guardians win, shrunk Boston’s lead over Cleveland to just 1.5 games for the final AL wild-card spot. It also delivered a series loss to the sub-.500 A’s, the second straight series loss at home for the Red Sox after dropping two out of three to the Yankees over the weekend.
With only nine games remaining and the red-hot Guardians making a charge, one might expect a bit of worry to be creeping into the Red Sox’ clubhouse. Cora — as you know by now — simply says that is not the case.
“I mean, we control our own destiny,” the manager said matter-of-factly. “So, go to Tampa and win a series. That’s the way I see it.”
Thursday’s loss dropped the Red Sox to 7-8 in the month of September, an inconvenient time for bad baseball to creep back into their systems after going 34-18 in July and August. The Guardians, meanwhile, are 13-4 in September, completing a sweep in Detroit on Thursday before heading to Minnesota, where they’ll face the 66-86 Twins (losers of 12 of their last 16) in a four-game set.
The Red Sox may still “control their own destiny,” but that status likely won’t last through the weekend if they drop another series to an opponent that is, on paper, inferior.
“Yeah. I mean, we never want that, but obviously we’ve got to turn the page,” Cora said. “We’ve got two on the road — we go to Tampa and Toronto — we’ve gotta play better baseball. That’s it. I think offensively, there were some signs today, but we’re not there. We’re not there offensively. We’ve just gotta make sure we understand who we are as an offense, try to keep the line moving.”
Despite seven hits and a pair of homers, the Red Sox’ offense didn’t really do enough damage against J.T. Ginn, who allowed a pair of runs over his six innings. Boston managed to get just two base runners aboard against the bullpen over the final three innings, and with Brayan Bello allowing three runs in the first inning en route to an ineffective four-inning outing, it was another one of those days at Fenway Park for the home team.
Cora’s statement of it not being a good day for the team was not about the big picture, though. Cora made that comment in reference to shortstop Trevor Story’s pair of throwing errors, each of which came with two outs — one in the third inning, one in the seventh — and allowed a run to cross the plate.
Story, along with Alex Bregman, represents the vocal veteran leadership core of the team. And while he tried to follow his manager’s lead by expressing confidence in the team, he ended up making a statement that borders on delusion.
“We haven’t been playing our best brand of baseball. It’s as simple as that,” Story, who hit a solo homer in the eighth inning Thursday, said. “We have the mindset that we’re gonna be playing for a month after this, so we’re not just trying to limp in. I think that’s a trap in itself. So we can keep looking ahead and keep trying to chase down that division.”
The division Story referenced is a chase that died with a 3-5 stretch against Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Arizona. The AL East-leading Blue Jays entered Thursday night six games clear of the Red Sox, likely not having to even worry too much about the Yankees, who sat 3.5 games back in second place.
The Red Sox, quite clearly, will not be making a run at the division, contrary to whatever assertion Story might have tried to make.
Still, the 32-year-old did present a simple approach for his teammates to follow.
“We can control what happens. We play good baseball, we get in. It’s as simple as that,” he said. “We know what we’ve done. We know what we can do. We’ve played some of the best baseball I feel like all season long over a good stretch of time, and I think that’s where we get our confidence from, is we know how good we can be.
“We’ve proven that, but also it’s time to do it when the time is right. And that’s now.”
For Cora, the resilience shown by the 2021 team to sweep the Nationals on the final weekend of the regular season (after a 1-5 stretch prior to that series) to reclaim a postseason spot provides evidence that there’s no reason to worry at this moment in time.
“For me, I take it the same day I took it in ’21,” Cora said. “Take it one day at a time. Don’t get too high, don’t get too low. It’s part of the season. It’s 162 for a reason.”
One could point out that the ’21 team was filled with veterans and World Series champions — Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez, Kyle Schwarber, Nate Eovaldi, Eduardo Rodriguez and Chris Sale among them — while also having fifth-year third baseman Rafael Devers ascending to All-Star status that season.
This team, outside of Bregman and closer Aroldis Chapman, doesn’t quite have the same pedigree. And losses like Thursday’s — and Tuesday’s, and Friday’s … and last Wednesday’s — provide a glimpse of a team that struggles to score runs in the season’s most critical stretch.
With the goal of “winning the series” in Tampa for the weekend, even that may not be enough. If the Red Sox win two of three over the Rays while the Guardians take three of four in Minnesota, they’ll still lose ground on the Guardians entering the final week.
FanGraphs gave the Red Sox a 98.2 percent chance of making the playoffs on Sept. 2. The current number of 82.7 percent still paints a pretty picture, but momentum is clearly moving in the direction that could lead to the dirty word of collapse resurfacing in the greater Boston for the final week of the season.
Maybe.
With a magic number of eight, the Red Sox can still make life fairly easy for themselves with a 6-3 record over the final 10 days of the season. That would, of course, require the Guardians to lose just twice in their final 10 games to punch Boston’s tickets to the Wild Card Series.
The question is … can they actually do it? Has anything this month provided reason for belief that as the pressure mounts, the Red Sox will produce, and pitch, and win?
From inside the clubhouse, the manager is putting forth a message of calm confidence. From the outside, doubt continues to mount.