Last week, as the Sox were preparing to return home from Houston, Cora was asked about the Sox digging themselves into a 1-5 hole. He said the path back to C-level was to start start stringing series wins together, a common baseball philosophy that might be called “chunking” or subdividing, at least in the real world. Then the Red Sox went out and failed again, continuing the only pattern they’ve ahdered to this season.<\/p>\n
You want some alarming trends?<\/p>\n
After declaring themselves a team bnuilt on run prevention, the Red Sox are 0-5 in games decided by one or two runs. They have allowed the ninth-most runs in baseball (45) and thr third-most home runs (13). They are tied for the third-most errors (nine).Their starting pitchers – billed as the strength of the team – possess a 5.19 ERA, good (or bad?) for 27th in baseball.Boston is batting just .215 with runners in scoring position, 27th among the 30 teams in the sport. Their 93 strikeouts are sixth-most in MLB and even Cora has acknowledged that the problem isn’t necessarily going away<\/a>.<\/p>\n All of that, of course, is just a small sample of – and let’s use another variation of Cora’s word here – the demolition.<\/p>\n BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – APRIL 04: Masataka Yoshida #7 of the Boston Red Sox looks on after striking out in the ninth inning against the San Diego Padres at Fenway Park on April 04, 2026 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Jaiden Tripi\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n One final thing before we sign off: Cincinnati was a playoff team last year; Houston finished with 87 wins and narrowly missed the postseason; the Padres were also a playoff team. Next up are the Milwaukee Brewers, who finished the 2025 regular season with the best record in baseball before losing to the dream-team and eventual world champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. Hopeless Sox apologists might look at that string of opponents are rightfully include that the schedule has been difficult so far.<\/p>\n But they’d still be missing the point.<\/p>\n The Red Sox were supposed to be one of those teams this year, folks. They were supposed to be an obstacle on the journeys of the Reds, Astros, Padres and Brewers. They were supposed to take the next step toward championship contention. Instead, the game and opponents appeared to have move forward while the Red Sox have backslid, ownership and management option for a timid, low-risk and scattershot approach that went from declaring a need for right-handed power (until they botched the Alex Bregman negotiation) to the now tragicomical run prevention.<\/p>\n Yes, the season is young.<\/p>\n But one can’t help but wonder if that’s now the greatest concern of all.<\/p>\n Tony Massarotti is the co-host of the number 1 afternoon-drive show, Felger & Mazz, on 98.5 The Sports Hub. He is a lifelong Bostonian who has been covering sports in Boston for the last 20 years. Tony worked for the Boston Herald from 1989-2008. He has been twice voted by his peers as the Massachusetts sportswriter of the year (2000, 2008) and has authored five books, including the New York times best-selling memoirs of David Ortiz, entitled \u201cBig Papi.\u201d A graduate of Waltham High School and Tufts University, he lives in the Boston area with his wife, Natalie, and their two sons. Tony is also the host of The Baseball Hour, which airs Monday to Friday 6pm-7pm right before most Red Sox games from April through October. The Baseball Hour offers a full inside look at the Boston Red Sox, the AL East, and all top stories from around the MLB (Major League Baseball).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overall, so far, the consistency has been inarguable. And the Red Sox are achieving it by losing. Let’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2375],"tags":[5,141,48,2542,6083,4,89,2543],"class_list":{"0":"post-666240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-red-sox","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-boston","10":"tag-boston-red-sox","11":"tag-bostonredsox","12":"tag-losing","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-red-sox","15":"tag-redsox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116357374521198366","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2269849119.jpg\" "\\"\\"\/")
<\/p>\n