McAdam: Three games in for Red Sox, it's worse than you imagined

There was entirely understandable concern when it came to the Red Sox rotation this season. Too many established starters had been lost from a year ago, and there seemed to be too many question marks in their place.

It looked bad on paper, especially when compared to other teams.

Three games in, it's possible those concerns were understated. It's bad, alright. Worse than expected, and revealing itself far sooner than expected.

The fear was: how it would it look against the more fearsome lineups on the Red Sox' schedule.

But after one series, a frightening realization has emerged: If it's this bad now, against the Baltimore Orioles, what's it going to look like against more formidable lineups?

If this rotation showed itself incapable of limiting the Orioles, what in God's name will it look like when it's time to face the Yankees, or the Rays, or, say, the Braves and Nationals?

That's the unmistakable takeaway from the last two days at Fenway. Nathan Eovaldi's one-run gem over six innings Friday in the opener already seems like something from another time. Of far more immediate concern is what transpired the last two days.



On Saturday, Martin Perez failed to command his signature cutter and was jumped for five runs in the first two innings. On Sunday, Ryan Weber, who had enjoyed a good camp, couldn't locate his two-seamer and caught way too much of the plate with everything else.

Result? Two runs in the first, another in the third and three more in the fourth.

And for the second straight day, the Red Sox trailed by multiple runs before they could even step into the batter's box. And again, we offer this for perspective:

Against. The. Baltimore Orioles.

That's pretty demoralizing for an offense, even one projected to be good enough to cover up for some of starters' deficiencies. A number of hitters -- led by Rafael Devers -- have been overly aggressive at the plate, surely some of that the result of attempting to club a five-run homer to help erase the formidable deficits they've up against in the second and third innings.

The result? Chasing pitches out of the zone and a lot of quick innings.

Still, the offense has some performance upon which they can fall back. Eventually, a lineup consisting of Devers, Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez and others will, in time, produce.

That can hardly be said of the starters. Both Perez and Weber have ERAs over 5.00 last year. And they represent the second and third spots in the rotation. They were thought to be established enough to claim regular turns.

The rest? The Sox are left to make it up as they go along. So, career reliever Josh Osich, whom the Sox saw as a potential lefty specialist when they got him last fall, will start Monday as the opener, to be followed by Zack Godley as the "bulk'' guy. Godley wasn't with the organization two weeks ago.

They'll be followed Tuesday by Matt Hall, who didn't do enough to convince the lowly Detroit Tigers that he was worthy of another look.

That's where things stand ... three games into the season.

In a normal year, there would be the usual fear-mongering and panic button-pushing after such a lousy opening series. But now, given the 60-game schedule and the lack of any attractive alternatives -- Eduardo Rodriguez is not walking through that door anytime soon -- it seems entirely well-earned.

Even Ron Roenicke, who projects calm, is aware that in 2020, it gets late early. There's a need to figure this out -- and quickly.

"Yes, no doubt, it's more important than in a regular season and you have six months and maybe you don't play that well for the first month,'' said Roenicke. "You know you're still in it; you just need to get hot at some point. Now, after the first month, you really can't be down that much.''

First month? More like first week.

The series with Baltimore was seen as a nice way to ease into things, a chance to fatten up on a team that had bigger problems than the Red Sox. Instead, it yielded two losses in three tries -- and pretty lopsided losses at that.

The schedule goes from the JV to the varsity pretty quickly. The Orioles are gone. Here come the Mets, Yankees and Rays over the next 10 days.

And if you thought the pitching was overmatched this weekend, I'm afraid you haven't seen anything yet.