The Red Sox have enough of a challenge in front of them.
Already, they have to overtake three teams -- minimum -- to put themselves back in the American League wild-card chase. They have to play .600 ball or better over the final seven weeks. And they still await the return of a handful of key performers currently lodged on the IL.
So they can't have everything, meaning you will hear few complaints that the Sox had to escape an eighth-inning mess entirely of their own doing to hold off the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-3, in the first game of a six-game road trip Tuesday night.
The Sox can't bother themselves with artistic merit or aesthetics. They are running an obstacle course here, and will be for the next month and a half, and any day that sees them drop a win into the bucket is good enough for them.
They're in no position to do otherwise. They're needy, not greedy.
It shouldn't have been as difficult as it was to handle the Pirates, losers of four straight coming into Tuesday and seven of their last nine. The Pirates have the second-fewest wins of any National League team and their lineup is faceless, unless you count Bryan Reynolds and their freakishly talented, 6-foot-7 shortstop, Oneil Cruz. As has been the case for the vast majority of Pirates teams of the last three decades, this particular edition is going nowhere fast.
So it was a good thing -- in more ways than one -- that the Red Sox put up four runs in the first inning and another in the second. First, because losing, last-place teams usually don't respond well to falling behind early. And secondly, because, while they couldn't have known it at the time, the Red Sox' offense itself went into hibernation after the second inning.
They couldn't know that the one-out single by Tommy Pham in the second inning would be their last hit of the night. Or, that the Sox would boast of exactly one additional baserunner the rest of the way.
But somewhere a switch got flipped and the Sox stopped making noise and started making outs -- lots of them, in succession. They were 0-for-20 with one measly walk from the third inning through the ninth, sending the minimum number of hitters to the plate. Whatever had worked in the first inning, when the first six hitters they sent to the plate reached base and four them scored, stopped, cold.
The Sox' core -- Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts and J.D. Martinez -- continues to struggle mightily. Devers had one walk and Martinez two, but neither had a hit. Bogaerts was held out of the game after fouling a ball off his shin Sunday night. Combined the trio has hit below .200 for the month.
Somehow, the Sox have gone 4-1 in their last five games despite scoring a grand total of 17 runs in those five games.
For another night, it fell to the pitching staff. Starter Nick Pivetta, who had to extricate himself from a first-and-second, two-out mess in the first, didn't allow another hit the rest of the way. He did issue two more walks after the first, but neither of those proved problematic.
After 99 pitches and no runs allowed over six innings, Pivetta was pulled, his job well done. All the Sox needed was six outs from some low-leverage relievers to pick up the victory.
That proved harder than it should have been. Austin Davis, who by default has had a big workload as one of just two lefties in the bullpen -- and given that Darwinzon Hernandez was the other for a time, the only one capable of throwing strikes -- was not effective, loading the bases with one out. That forced Alex Cora to do something he clearly wanted to avoid: call on John Schreiber.
Thanks to his beard and his excitable mien on the mound, Schreiber is easily recognizable. Soon, that may be even easier -- he'll be the one with his right arm hanging down close to his kneecap. In the 24 games since the second half of the schedule began, Schreiber has pitched in almost half (11 of 24) of the team's games, and the innings are taking their toll.
After recording the second out of the inning with a strikeout of Reynolds, Schreiber was a strike away from getting out of the inning unscathed when Ben Gamel drilled a bases-clearing double to right, bringing the potential tying run to the plate. He got a flyout to strand the runner, but the damage had been done. In a game in which the Sox led by five with six outs to go, they were forced into using one of their two best relievers.
A dominant Matt Barnes enjoyed a 10-pitch ninth and the save, and the Sox had their win.
"At the end, we'll take it,'' said Cora. "But as a manager, you've got to keep preaching, 'Let's be better.' ''
Improvement is the goal for Wednesday. Acceptance was the theme Tuesday. There was a win to chalk up, however ugly it might have been.