McAdam: Swept at home by the Orioles, Red Sox already reeling to start the 2021 season

As spring training wound down and the regular season approached, Alex Cora was often asked about his goals for the 2021 Red Sox regular season.

Invariably, Cora would zero in on two aspects in which he sought improvement -- not just from last year, when Cora was exiled from the team, but also, from 2019, when the team faceplanted its attempted defense of a title.

Time and again, Cora would prioritize two things: to play better at home and to play better within the division.

So, naturally, the fact that the Red Sox were swept at Fenway by the heretofore lowly Baltimore Orioles, reflected a poor start in both categories.

Cora is currently 0-2.

Worse, his team is already 0-3.

Somewhere along the way, the Red Sox have evolved from terrors at home to just plain terrible. The team that won better than two-thirds of its home games in 2018 (57-24, .704 winning percentage) has now lost its way at Fenway. And the dominance wasn't just a one-year thing -- for a three-year period, beginning in 2016 and ending in 2018, the Red Sox racked up a .626 winning percentage at its own ballpark, tying the Yankees in that stretch for the best home winning percentage.

Starting in 2019, however, the Sox have played as though their own house was haunted. In 2019, when the team barely finished above .500 and dipped to third in the division, they were far better on the road than at home, where they finished 11 games over .500 only to post a losing mark at home (38-43).

Meanwhile, the less said about the 2020 edition, the better. But in the interest of full disclosure, the Sox were a putrid 11-20 last year for a paltry .355 winning percentage.

How the mighty have fallen, indeed.

And it would be one thing if the Sox had just been beaten up by the Yankees or Minnesota Twins or some other team headed for the postseason again. But no, these three losses -- each one, arguably, worse than the one before -- came at the hands of the Orioles, the same Orioles who are essentially on record as not even trying.

Not that it hurt them in the three-game series with the Sox, who, while they have scaled back their ambition for the immediate future, are on record as hoping to be competitive this season.

They sure didn't look it this weekend. In 27 innings, the Sox haven't sniffed a lead and watching them assemble their season-opening losing streak was like watching a clown discover new and different pratfalls. On Friday, they couldn't hit. On Saturday, they couldn't field. And on Sunday, they couldn't pitch.

Is this what they meant when they touted their newfound versatility?

Having fumbled their way to an 11-3 rout Sunday, they then tinkered with an alternate reality. Garrett Richards, straight-faced, maintained that he was more the victim of bad luck than anything else. This was the same Richards who allowed nine of the 15 hitters he faced to reach base.

Yet in his recounting of his brief outing -- he couldn't record an out in the third before being mercifully lifted -- Richards maintained his pitching line was highly misleading.

"I mean, to be honest, I was throwing a lot of strikes,'' he said. "It just kind of felt like every ball that was put in place just kind of fell. I got beat on the shift a couple of times today, walked a couple of guys late in the count. ... But other than that, (my) delivery felt good, physically I felt good. I was just trying to fill up the zone and unfortunately, every ball was put in play just wasn't around someone who had a glove on.''

Luckily, his manager was at least somewhat tethered closer to reality, noting that the Sox and Richards "were unable to stop the line.''

That last part was apparently a reference to the conga line the Orioles formed around the basepaths, scoring early and often as they raced to a 10-0 lead by the third inning.

Looking at the bigger picture, Cora was more direct in his assessment.

"A tough one ... there's nothing else you can say,'' said Cora of the sweep. "We got beat in every aspect of the game. We're off to a rough start.''

Surely, this was not the triumphant return to work that Cora must have envisioned for himself. Not in his worst nightmares this winter could Cora have thought his team would begin Cora 2.0 embarrassed on its own field by arguably the least-talented team in the American League.

To his credit, Cora offered no excuses.

"Overall, we're not proud of what happened this weekend,'' said Cora. "We've talked about playing good baseball against the division, playing good baseball at home and we didn't this weekend.''

Three games remain on homestand, but the bad news is, the opposition is about to get tougher in the persons of the Tampa Bay Rays, who've manhandled the Sox at Fenway in recent seasons.

More trouble awaits, in other words, for the team that's 0-2 in goals and 0-3 in the standings.