McAdam: Three thoughts as the Red Sox continue to spiral downward

As the Red Sox' losing streak stretches to a season-high five games, three thoughts on yet another defeat at Yankee Stadium:

1. Walks are haunting Red Sox starters.

On Thursday against the Tampa Bay Rays, Andrew Cashner issued five walks, tying his season-high. On Friday in New York, it was more of the same as Eduardo Rodriguez issued a season-high six, including two in the first inning, helping to set the stage for a grand slam by Gleyber Torres.

Even Chris Sale, whose loss last Sunday night against the Yankees helped kick off this losing streak, allowed three walks in just 5.1 innings. Know how many times Sale issued at least three walks a year ago? Just four times in 27 starts.

It's asking for trouble against any lineup to put men on base. Against an offense like Tampa Bay, sometimes you can get away with extra baserunners. But facing a team like the Yankees, in a small ballpark where the long ball is always a threat, it's asking for trouble.

And while Rodriguez didn't allow any runs after the first Friday night, he kept tempting fate, with at least one walk in four of the next five innings.

2. Shutdown innings have been few and far between.

Again, Cashner was guilty of this Thursday. After a solo homer from Xander Bogaerts in the fifth brought the Red Sox to within a run of the Rays, Cashner blew up in the sixth, allowing three more runs and allowing Tampa Bay to regain any momentum they might have lost with the homer in the previous inning.

The same problem reared its head Friday night in the series opener against the Yankees. A two-run homer by J.D. Martinez gave the Red Sox a quick 2-0 lead four batters into the game and surely rocked planted a seed of doubt with James Paxton, who was clubbed for seven runs last week by this same Sox team.

But in the bottom of the inning, Rodriguez not only cracked the door open for the Yankees -- he held it wide open, allowing a leadoff single and then two straight walks to fill the bases. Immediately, Rodriguez found himself pitching out of the stretch as the Yankee Stadium crowd became a factor.

Sure enough, Rodriguez missed location with his first pitch to Gleyber Torres, who hit a grand slam to left. The Red Sox 2-0 lead didn't last more than 10 or so minutes and the Sox found themselves (unsuccessfully) playing from behind for the rest of the night.

The issue has been a common thread throughout this past week. That, and the inability of Red Sox' starters to protect leads they've been given. On Tuesday night, David Price was given an early 3-0 lead matched against Charlie Morton, but proceeded to allow a run in the third and three more in the fifth, forced from the game.

One thing's clear: as Alex Cora reminds us periodically that his team has been consistently inconsistent, no facet of the team more clearly embodies that than the starting rotation.

3. Red Sox haven't responded to the schedule.

Nearly two weeks ago, the Red Sox embarked on the most important and difficult stretch of their season, with 14 straight games exclusively against the Rays and Yankees.

The thought was that the Sox needed to win nine or 10 of those to pick up some ground in the division and keep themselves in the middle of the wild card race.

It began well enough with two-of-three in Tampa Bay and three straight against New York. Since then? It's been an unmitigated disaster, with five straight losses.

That stretch has been so bad that the Sox now need to win the remaining three games of this series in New York to merely emerge with a winning record from that 14-game run. And given how they're going, what are the odds of that happening?

Maybe the Red Sox didn't have as many issues with effort and execution as they did Thursday night. But facing a pitcher whom they had beaten up a week ago tonight, they managed a grand total of three hits all night.

Despite that, Cora seemed strangely sanguine about the results.

"Honestly, I'm not frustrated today,'' said Cora postgame. "I was more frustrated with the way we played against Tampa. There's games that, hey, you're going to get beat like that. ... It was just a good baseball game.''

Three hits -- two after the first inning -- constitutes a "good baseball game?''

While Cora has made it a hallmark of his tenure not to show panic or lose his cool, some urgency from him might be welcome here.

In a season that is rapidly slipping away, atta-boys don't seem like the proper response.