The All-Star break is nine days away, almost close enough for the Red Sox to touch it.
It's right there, just out of reach -- so close and yet so far.
The injuries have caught up with the Red Sox at the worst possible time in their schedule -- just as they find themselves in the middle of a two-week gauntlet against two of their toughest division opponents -- the Rays and the Yankees.
To say it has not gone well so far would be a massive understatement. The Sox have played five games on this homestand and lost four of them. The rest of the way isn't looking any better. On Saturday, the Red Sox will start Kutter Crawford for lack of any other options.
They will cross their fingers, and, perhaps, duck.
The Yankees pounded them, again, 12-5, Friday night, making it 18 runs scored in the last two nights. The Boston offense has shown signs of life again, scoring five runs in each of the first two games.
Want an idea of how bad it's going in the pitching department? When this homestand began, the Red Sox were 40-10 when scoring four or more runs. And yet because their starters haven't been able to keep them in game this week, they've lost three games in the last four in which they've scored four or more.
Connor Seabold was Friday's sacrificial lamb, left at the pitching altar until he was tattered, smacked around for seven runs on nine hits. Seabold appeared tentative on the mound, afraid to let his stuff play in the zone. The result? Two walks, and countless at-bats in which Seabold fell behind and was forced to throw strikes, with the Yankees almost salivating at the plate.
Seabold's stuff isn't elite to begin with, and when the other team knows what's coming, it's decidedly less than that.
This is what happens when you lose 80 percent of your starting rotation to the IL. It's one thing to have Seabold or Kutter Crawford make the occasional spot starts, perhaps against a hand-picked opponent on the schedule. But when those same pitchers, not ready for regular duty, end up taking the ball every five days because there are no other available options, the results are predictable. And ugly.
Perhaps no single play in the last week better symbolized the Red Sox' current problems than in the third inning. With two runners on and seven runs already in, Seabold got Joey Gallo to hit a flyball to right. Almost immediately, this became trouble as right fielder Christian Arroyo lost the ball in the twilight. As soon as the ball went above the ballpark lights, Arroyo had no idea where it was -- a predicament he plainly expressed as he stretched his arms out, palms upward: the universal sign of a fielder in distress.
The ball fell far behind him and to the right, near the warning track, some 50 or so feet away.
"Gallo hits skyballs anyway,'' said Arroyo, "and right at that time, it was absolutely twilight. Ball went up and you kind of just go into panic mode. It's a terrible feeling. You feel kind of hopeless out there. I don't really know what else you can do -- you can't catch what you can't see, right? It went up. I tried my best, to think of a spot where it might have been. By that time, I didn't see anything. So I just turned around, and got to it as quick as I could.
"It's just a helpless feeling. There's really no other way to put it. It stinks. I wish I could say I could work on it, but really the only time you see twilight is during the game. It sucks. Just a helpless feeling. I'm not really happy about it.''
And that's where the Red Sox find themselves -- helpless, and not really happy about it.
"Baseball's a long season,'' said a philosophical Arroyo. "Guys are going to be banged up. It's part of it. You play 162 games in 180 days. Hopefully, we can get these guys going, get to the All-Star break, play some good baseball to end (the first half), flip the script it, then get to the break, rejuvenate and come back for the second half and keep playing good baseball.''
For now, the Red Sox find themselves in a war of attrition, one they're losing. The games keep coming, and the Red Sox are in survival mode, trying to get to the first half finish line in one piece.