McAdam: Red Sox unable to get any traction

The end of April is near, and still, the Red Sox spin their wheels.

Two steps forward, one back. Just when it seems like they seem ready to snap out of their early-season lethargy and put together a streak to get them back to the .500 back, they revert to form and watch helplessly as the mud flies everywhere, making for an unsightly mess.

When they swept the Tampa Bay Rays last weekend at Tropicana Field, it looked like a delayed wakeup call had finally been answered. So, naturally, they promptly returned home and dropped two games on the same day to the thoroughly otherwise unimpressive Detroit Tigers.

Then, after rebounding for a split of their series with the Tigers, picking up two straight, they canceled that out with two losses in a rain-shortened sweep to the Rays.

They sit 7.5 games behind first-place Tampa, which, not so incidentally, is where they were before they went to Tampa 10 days ago.

So much for momentum. So much for progress.

"We've got the guys to do it,'' said Chris Sale, who tripped in the first two innings before carrying the Sox into the seventh in a 5-2 loss. "This is basically the same team that won a World Series. We're not losing confidence. We're not hanging heads. We're not going to point fingers. That's who we are, that's how we got where we are. We're doing the same things, but we're not getting the same results.''

In point of fact, however, the Sox aren't doing the same things they did a year ago.

Too often, they're beating themselves, as they did Sunday when yet another error by Rafael Devers opened the door for two more unearned runs, leaving the Sox with 15 of those this season. In all of baseball, only Gordon Beckham has committed more errors than Devers this season.

They're also not delivering the big hit when they need it most, as they did almost as a matter of routine in 2018. In their four losses on this homestand, they're a combined 1-for-34 with runners in scoring position. By accident, you would think, a team would have more success than that.

And while the pitching has vastly improved from the wretched first two weeks, this startling fact remains: The Red Sox have lost all six of Sale's starts this season. By way of comparison, the Sox didn't lose their sixth Sale start until June 1 a year ago.

When your No. 1 starter takes the mound, the expectation is that your team is going to win the vast majority of those games. But like so much else associated with the 2019 Red Sox, expectations and reality aren't conflating.

"That's obvious -- we haven't been consistent,'' said Alex Cora after the Sox lost yet another series, dropping them to 1-5-3 in that department. "We pitch, we don't hit; we hit, we don't pitch -- you know those streaks. One thing's going, another is not. Defensively, we show flashes, then we don't. We haven't been able to put everything together.''

Xander Bogaerts, who's been one of the few consistent performers on the roster, expressed hope that a little thing -- "a blooper with the bases loaded'' -- could turn around the team's sagging fortunes, while trying out a series of words to describe the team's feelings about the poor start.

For now, though, the analysis and the self-flagellation only gets them so far. What's needed is an honest-to-goodness winning streak to put some distance between themselves and the crater-sized hole they've dug for themselves.

"I know what we can do, I know what we have,'' said Sale. "I know what we're capable of. We just have to stay on it. We've got to keep striking the iron -- swinging the bat, throwing the ball -- and just know that on the other side of all this, there's going to be some green grass. It's not easy to swallow, but we'll be there.''

At some point, however, faith and hard work aren't enough.

As Sale likes to remind people, however, this isn't a try-hard league. At bottom, it's about the results, which, as if it's not painfully obvious, the Red Sox currently lack.

"No one cares about the hard work, no cares about the effort,'' acknowledged Sale. "We've got to start winning games.''