McAdam: Red Sox offense joins the list of woes for the night

We interrupt this full-fledged panic about the state of the Red Sox pitching staff -- and starting rotation, in particular -- to remind that you pitching wasn't all that ailed the Sox on Monday night.

Shifting their road trip to Oakland, some things remained the same. Red Sox starters again failed to deliver a quality start. The bullpen, which had been mostly excellent in Seattle, allowed the A's to tack on three late-inning runs. And there was the requisite error in the infield ... for the fourth time in five games.

So, more of the same.

But there was also this: the offense, which had produced 24 runs in four games against the Mariners, became an issue in the 7-0 shutout loss to the A's.

Facing journeyman Aaron Brooks -- the fifth starter on a mediocre staff, making his first big league start since 2015, and hanging on to a roster spot tenuously -- the Red Sox barely made any noise with their bats.

In the second inning, a double to the right-center gap by Xander Bogaerts followed by a single to center by Mitch Moreland, appeared to set up the Sox for a quick run. But A's center fielder Ramon Laureano fired a missle from center, on the fly, and cut down Bogaerts at the plate.

(The Sox challenged the call, and some angles appeared to indicate that Bogaerts got his front leg to scrape across the plate before he was tagged out by Oakland catcher Nick Hundley. The original call stood).

Either way, the Red Sox, who came oh-so-close to scoring the first run of the night, never came within 90 feet of scoring again the rest of the way. In fact, after Moreland's almost-RBI single, the Sox didn't muster so much as another hit until J.D. Martinez lined a sharp single to left with two out in the seventh.

Against Brooks, the Sox had just one more baserunner for the rest of his outing.

Brooks hardly qualifies as dominant. His fastball sat in the low 90s most of the night. But the Sox still couldn't solve him. In his six innings, the second inning rally-that-wasn't marked the only time the Sox sent more than three hitters to the plate in the same inning against him.

Again, this wasn't Justin Verlander or Corey Kluber. This was Aaron Brooks, who came into Monday's start with three big league wins to show for his parts of five seasons and a bloated career ERA of 8.01.

The Sox made it easy for him. Advocating for your hitters to attack early in the count when they see good pitches is one thing, but the Sox were downright impatient at times. In four of the first five frames, Brooks needed 13 pitches or fewer to record three outs. It wasn't until the sixth, his final inning of work, that the Sox forced him to throw more than 20 pitches in an inning.

At least in the four games in Seattle, the Red Sox offense -- with the help from a poor Mariners bullpen, and, on one occasion, the defensively challenged rookie third baseman Dylan Moore -- gave the team a chance in the ninth inning. And for most teams, averaging six runs per game -- as they did at T-Mobile Park -- is going to produce at least as many wins as losses.

But you could almost see this coming. The lineup, knowing that the pitching staff is scuffling and realizing that the bullpen is already overworked after just four games, begins to press, intent on getting an early lead. What happens next is what happened to the Red Sox Monday night -- not much.

For the entire night, the Red Sox had exactly three at-bats with runners in scoring position. In the first one, they came through, only to (possibly) be robbed by home plate umpire Kerwin Danley, and then again by the replay crew. But the next two times, the Sox got a force play and a pop-up to second for their efforts.

Like the pitching difficulties, the offensive scuffling isn't likely to last long. There are too many good hitters in the lineup for that to happen.

For now, however, the Red Sox are masquerading as a bad team and the accompanying profile. When they hit, they don't pitch. And when they pitch even a little bit, they don't hit at all.