McAdam: Red Sox problems can't be isolated, making for a tougher turnaround

Slumps happen. Teams experience losing streaks

Ordinarily, however, a club's poor play can be traced to a single element. Maybe the starting pitching is off. Or perhaps the bats have gone cold. For others, it's a series of bullpen implosions that are the root of the problem.

But for the 2019 Red Sox, not-so-proud owners of a 2-7 record, it isn't that simple.

It isn't just the hitting or the pitching or the defensive play.

It's "D'' ... all of the above. And more.



Name the category, and the Sox are failing miserably. They've given up 23 homers in nine games. They have a minus-26 run differential, the worst for a defending World Series team since the 1984 Baltimore Orioles. They have one quality start from their rotation in nine games. Heck, they've had one game in which the starter has gotten into the sixth inning.

Offensively, they're stranding runners at an alarming rate, with 20 left on base in the last two games alone. Their .384 slugging percentage before Friday's clunker left them in the bottom half of American League teams. On Friday, they went down in order five times in the first seven innings, and after bunching together three hits in the third, didn't come up with another hit until the eighth when the game was ridiculously out of hand.

Defensively, the Sox aren't converting balls in play into outs. Among AL teams, only the Mariners have committed more errors. But errors, of course, don't tell the whole story. There was no error charged when two outfielders pulled up and allowed a ball to drop on the warning track Thursday afternoon in Oakland and none charged in the fourth inning Friday night either, despite three misplays in the span of three hitters -- a blooper that fell in between three fielders; a low line drive that went off an infielder's glove for a single; and a juggled grounder which enabled a baserunner to score from third.

It's not one thing, in other words. It's everything. All at once.

"We understand that we're not playing good baseball,'' remarked Alex Cora. "It's a tough spot right now, but we'll be OK. I think it's overall. Like (Thursday), we were up 3-0 and (the A's) came back and we ended up losing the game. Tonight, we had the lead and (the Diamondbacks) came back right away.''

But it could take a while. Maybe the offense will bail out a poor performance by a starter here or there, but can't be sustained for long. And if the ball isn't being caught, it doesn't matter how well the pitchers are throwing.

Of course, it would help if the starters could do a far better job in setting the tone. As Cora noted Friday night, the team has had a lead for a minuscule portion of the schedule so far. In each of their two wins, the Sox stormed back in the ninth inning to take the lead for good, but actually trailed for most of the night.

And while the ninth inning rallies demonstrated some resiliency on the part of the Sox, that, too, is a lousy formula. You can't count on many late-inning rallies to win games.

The biggest fear going into the season was the bullpen, but other than a couple of mid-game collapses -- like the one experienced by Brian Johnson in the sixth inning Friday (seven runs allowed) -- the relievers have actually been a strength. Before Friday's debacle, the Sox had a more-than-respectable 2.37 bullpen ERA.

More often than not, the bullpen has been largely irrelevant, with just two save opportunities through the first nine games.

One issue that has surfaced, though, is the challenge of 11 games in 11 days. Because the starters have almost uniformly failed to provide length -- only two times has a pitcher made his way into and through the sixth inning -- too much is being asked of the relievers in the early going, with no off-day on which to recover.

And so, the losses pile up and so does the mounting frustration. Rick Porcello exploded in the dugout after the fourth, upending a cooler of ice. An eighth-inning appearance by Eduardo Nunez on the mound seemed to provide some levity, a way to forget what had happened in the first seven innings.

"For how great it was last year, I understand what a big league season is,'' said Cora. "You're going to have your ups and downs. We've got to stay calm. The same way we did things last year, we're going to do them again. We'll stay in touch with (the players), keep talking to them and trying to coach them. We'll get them in the right spot.

"At one point, we're going to get hot and we're going to start playing good baseball and when we look back (on the first 10 days), we'll be like, 'That wasn't fun baseball.' But, like I said, we're going to be OK.''

Probably. But maybe just not right away.