McAdam: On Friday, Alex Cora plans a team meeting - there's a lot at stake

Even before the Red Sox were embarrassed again by the Tampa Bay Rays Thursday night, 9-4, to complete a sweep for the visitors and extend the home team's losing streak to four games, Alex Cora was planning to talk with his team before it begins a four-game series in New York on Friday.

Cora was going to remind them that, with nearly two full months of the regular season remaining, the team had lots of baseball still front of it, was still in the playoff race and, as he's been saying all season, possesses more than enough talent to return to the postseason.

It was, presumably, going to be part pep-talk and part circle-the-wagons. No player from the outside arrived at the trade deadline, so the Sox were going to have to get this done on their own.

But somewhere over the course of nearly three and a half hours on the Fenway lawn Thursday, things got more complicated. Never mind that they dropped an additional full game behind Tampa and the others in the wild card chase. Or that a homestand that began with such promise -- 38 runs against the Yankees in three games! -- ended so disastrously.

No, it was more about the general laissez-faire approach from the Red Sox, who, worse than losing the last four, have done so without much effort this week. Blame it, if you wish, on management's refusal to supply any help, but the team looked strangely demoralized at times over the last two nights, and indeed, since the downward spiral began Sunday night against the Yankees.

"It's Aug. 1, 2, whatever it is, and we don't like where we're at,'' said Cora. "It seems like the last few days, it wasn't a great brand of baseball. ... We've got to be better at home, we've got to be better in the division, we've got to be better against everybody. We're not doing that right now.

"We didn't execute. ... It didn't look good. There were a few plays that ... we don't play that way. We saw it throughout the week, throughout the series. We'll talk to them. We'll address it because that can't happen. We've got to be better. It's not that you have to fake energy because you're still in the big leagues. There's not too many people in the world in the big leagues right now, there's only 750 of them. I think the effort has to be there every day.

"You're going to go through slumps and through struggles, but there's a few things that you can control, like the effort. There were a few things that, eh, effort-wise, it didn't look good out there.''

Before Thursday's loss, Cora acknowledged that he wasn't much of an advocate of team meetings, a sentiment shared by most big-league managers. Seasons are long and losing streaks and tough stretches are inevitable. It's important that a manager not show panic after every few defeats, since that can send the wrong message to the clubhouse.

Earl Weaver, summing up the aversion felt by many fellow managers, famously asked: "What if you have a team meeting ... and then lose?''

But Cora isn't concerned with that. He's seen enough losses -- four straight, tying a season-high. It seems like a month ago when the Sox had entered this critical stretch by winning three of four on the road against the Rays and then took the first three from the Yankees in most convincing fashion.

Instead, it was only five days ago. That's how quickly things deteriorate. That's how fast a season can get away.

It seems a given that the division is now beyond their reach, a fact tacitly acknowledged by Dave Dombrowski on Wednesday afternoon. The wild card, though, is still up for grabs, even in the wake of a demoralizing series that saw the Rays finish their year here at 8-1.

But there's more than a playoff berth at stake. There's professionalism, there's pride and there's playing the game properly: with attention to details, a focus on fundamentals and, above all else, maintaining a sense of pride.

The Sox weren't just embarrassed by the Rays in the last three nights. They were embarrassing. And that's far less acceptable. Starters were shelled. Double plays didn't get turned. The Sox looked, in a word, flat.

Way back in spring training, there was a question about how Cora would deal with failure. In his first year in the Boston dugout, the Red Sox were so dominant -- both in the regular season and then again in October -- that they barely broke a sweat. It all looked so easy, even if it wasn't.

And indeed, by virtually every measure, this season barely resembles last. Instead of setting the pace from the start, the Red Sox have been in catch-up mode since the first road trip.

Now Cora faces his test. What he says Friday could determine not just how the Sox fare at Yankee Stadium over the weekend, but how they finish the rest of the season, with the won-loss record almost irrelevant.

A spot in the postseason isn't all that's at stake.