It's probably too early to say that the loss of Adam Duvall over the last two games has had a direct impact on the suddenly slumping Red Sox offense.
Even before Duvall fractured his left wrist in Detroit on Sunday afternoon, an injury that will probably sideline him for a couple of months, the Sox were already showing signs that their lineup was vulnerable. In a series against the underwhelming Pittsburgh Pirates last week, the Red Sox were twice limited to a single run.
The loss of Duvall surely hasn't helped matters, but trying to draw a line from his absence and the Sox scoring just two runs in the last 18 innings is probably a stretch. Not having Duvall is a symptom of their offensive malaise, not the root cause.
In their 7-2 loss to the surging Tampa Bay Rays Tuesday night, the Red Sox' offensive woes ran much deeper. After a patient game plan in the early going resulted in three walks and at least the hint of some scoring chances, the Sox then abandoned all patience and decided to swing early and often against Rays pitching -- to their own demise.
Instead of waiting for pitches on which they could do damage, the Sox swung freely -- with predictable results. They had just two hits over the first seven innings and three of their six hits came in the ninth, the baseball equivalent of garbage time with the Rays comfortably ahead.
There are problems from top-to-bottom. KikΓ© Hernandez is currently mired in an 0-for-27 slump, meaning his last base hit came nine days ago. He's gone two and a half series since his last base hit, culminating in an 0-for-5 effort Tuesday that featured two strikeouts. Fittingly, the final out of the night came as Hernandez was thrown out at first after the third strike got away from Rays catcher Francisco Mejia.
Things aren't much better in the middle of the lineup, either. Justin Turner had a sixth-inning single, but that hit served to snap an 0-for-16 skid. Almost two weeks into the season, Turner has just one base hit -- a double.
After an encouraging start to his MLB career, Masataka Yoshida has slumped. The Red Sox' cleanup hitter doesn't have an RBI in the last six games and while he has shown remarkable control of the strike zone -- he worked yet another walk in his first plate appearance Tuesday -- he's not driving the ball much and has fallen into the habit of getting on top of fastballs up in the zone, resulting in a slew of groundouts.
At least Yoshida's struggles can be chalked up to a player making the transition from Japan to Major League Baseball and some adjustments -- from the zone of the ball, to unfamiliarity with the pitchers -- have to be expected.
But what's everyone else's excuse?
With Duvall out of the picture until mid-June at least, the team is woefully short of power. And, for that matter, any kind of sock from the right side. Not a single hitter from the right side -- not Turner, not Rob Refsnyder, not Christian Arroyo, not Bobby Dalbec and certainly not Hernandez -- looks capable of driving the ball.
As a team, the Sox are ''slugging'' -- we use that term advisedly in this case -- just .421, good for a middle-of-the-pack 13th. Against lefthanded pitching, however, that number dips all the way to .368, ranking them 22nd among the 30 teams.
Manager Alex Cora was confident in spring training that better plate discipline, putting the ball in play more regularly and the ban on infield shifts would enable the Red Sox to succeed even without a lot of home run power. But such an approach requires some timely hitting to extend innings and plate baserunners and the Sox have struggled to do all of that.
While they rank near the top in runs scored, the Red Sox have also had four games in their first 11 in which they've scored two runs or fewer.
Chalk up the last two nights -- two runs in 18 innings -- to a team both adjusting to the loss of Duvall, and facing a Tampa Bay team that can seemingly do no wrong, both at the plate and on the mound.
But there are more ominous signs, too. The team has no obvious leadoff hitter, and until Turner and Yoshida get it going with the bats, no one to protect Rafael Devers, their one difference-maker.
Eleven games is an admittedly small sample size and it's dangerous to make sweeping generalizations based on less than two weeks of play. But if you were concerned about the Red Sox ability to score enough for them to be competitive, the first three-and-a-half series have done nothing to make assuage your apprehension.