Hurley: Assessing Red Sox panic meter ahead of Fenway opener

Ahh ... Opening Day. You remember Opening Day, right? The kids were leading the way at the plate, Garrett Crochet was dominating on the mound, and the 2026 Red Sox appeared to be carrying the proper level of energy and commitment into a season that carries with it some real expectations.

The vibes, as the youth might say, were immaculate. Now, just a week later, they're in the toilet.

As a result, the atmosphere is sure to be just a little bit dampened Friday afternoon when Fenway Park hosts its first game of the 2026 season.

After the nearly perfect 3-0 win over the Reds to start the season, they got a bad Sonny Gray start and an extra-inning loss, a bullpen breakdown on Sunday, a Ranger Suárez crash landing in Houston, a Brayan Bello dud on Tuesday, and an uncharacteristically ineffective outing from Crochet in the series finale. All the while, the Red Sox' offense has been borderline nonexistent, plating just 17 runs in six games while batting .208 with a .642 OPS as a team. (If you separate Wilyer Abreu's .417 average and 1.334 OPS, the picture is even worse.)

Throw in a mysterious Carlos Narvaez benching on Wednesday, some terrible uses of the ABS challenge system, and an unforgivable situation of Alex Cora not knowing the count during what should have been a strikeout in Tuesday's loss, and the opening six-pack of games has gone worse than anybody could have imagined.

That being said, there's nothing lamer in sports than anyone who wants to light their hair on fire while ranting and raving about THE SEASON BEING OVAH when the calendar has barely hit April.

Things are bad, yes. But are they sustainably bad? That's what we'll try to tackle here, in an effort to determine which of the early-season issues might get better, and which ones might stick around for the long haul. And because every story needs a hook, this one will have a rating system of one to five Roenickes. (Why Roenickes? Well, with all due respect to the baseball lifer, Ron Roenicke managed the 2020 Red Sox, a team we all knew was DOA when the season began. Any doubts or critiques you held toward the team when the season began in late July ended up being as bad as expected or even worse. Ergo, the more Roenickes on the rating scale, the more worrisome the issue for the remaining 156 games in the season.)

The issue: Starting Pitching
Rating: 1.5 Roenickes

With one turn through the rotation plus one more Crochet start, the collective work of the starting rotation has been brutal. While the Yankees have the best starters' ERA (0.53) in baseball and the Blue Jays aren't far behind in third (1.74), the Red Sox have the fifth-worst at 5.22. Opponents are hitting a robust .287 off them (second-worst mark in MLB) while the starters' WHIP is 1.500, fourth-worst in baseball.

Crochet followed up his sparkling Opening Day start (6 IP, 3 H, 2 BB, 0 R, 8 SO) by serving up a three-run tater to Carlos Correa while giving up five runs (four earned) over just five innings on Wednesday. It was a reminder that Crochet can't be relied on to win every time he takes the mound for Boston.

The lone bright spot outside of Crochet the first time through came from Connelly Early, who allowed just one run while striking out six in his 5.1 innings in Cincinnati. The trio of Gray, Suárez and Bello, on the other hand, allowed 12 earned runs in a combined 13 innings of work.

There's no way to sugarcoat it. It's been bad.

But it shouldn't last. Outside of Early, these players are not unknowns. Sonny Gray made his MLB debut when Roman Anthony was 9 years old and has made nearly 350 MLB appearances. Suárez became a full-time big league starter in 2021 and posted a 3.25 ERA and 1.243 WHIP over nearly 700 innings over the last five seasons. Bello may have been miscast as an Opening Day starter two years ago, but he's also overqualified to fill the fifth-starter role.

Barring several acts of God, this group will be significantly better moving forward. Not a real concern.

The Issue: Short-Term Offense
Rating: 1 Roenicke

The Red Sox have gotten consistent hitting from Abreu (.417 average with a .917 slugging percentage) and their two catchers (Connor Wong and Carlos Narvaez are a combined 9-for-19). That is it.

After a 3-for-4 Opening Day performance, Anthony went 1-for-17 over the following four games. He struck out four times on Tuesday and found himself on the bench on Wednesday, before hitting a pinch-hit homer in the ninth. Fellow "Big Three" member Marcelo Mayer is 1-for-12 since delivering two big hits after entering as a pinch hitter in the season opener. Three players -- Caleb Durbin, Isiah Kiner-Filefa and Masataka Yoshida -- are still looking for their first hits of the year, with Durbin an astounding 0-for-18 with just one walk in 19 plate appearances. Jarren Duran and Ceddanne Rafaela round out an outfield that has just two extra-base hits that have not come off the bat of Abreu, and Trevor Story is hitting .138 with a team-high 13 strikeouts.

To say the least, it's been a problem.

Yet for as much as we might question the overall offensive punch of this group, it won't be this bad. It can't be this bad. Outside of the Durbin-Anthony-Mayer trio, there's too much big league experience on the roster for the offense to be anything close to this bad for very long. In fact, it's hardly worth talking about.

What is worth talking about, though ...

The Issue: Big-Picture Offense
Rating: 4.5 Roenickes

The Red Sox did not have a great offense a year ago, which included both Rafael Devers and Alex Bregman. Then they dumped Devers. Then they said goodbye to Bregman.

As one might imagine, the offense hasn't magically become great. And that's a real concern for the 2026 Red Sox.

Despite the offensive inefficiencies last year, the Red Sox ranked ninth in team OPS and seventh in runs scored. For the team to have a top-10 offense this year, it'll need Story to replicate the one good season he's had since joining the Red Sox in 2022, it'll need Duran to prove that last year was the exception and 2024 was the norm, it'll need Anthony and Mayer to rapidly mature into reliable, everyday big leaguers, and it'll need Abreu to take the mantle as the team's thumper. And even that may not be enough.

So yes, the offense will be better than it has been, and that can turn some of the 6-5 or 3-2 losses into wins. But overall, a weak offense that consistently gets sat down in order in quick innings will almost certainly be an issue that plagues them all year long.

The Issue: Bullpen
Rating: 2 Roenickes

You could be forgiven if you forgot that Aroldis Chapman is still on the team, considering he appeared in the first two games of the season, took care of his business in 20 total pitches, and hasn't been seen since. He'll be plenty rested for Friday's Fenway opener, to say the least. 

Yet while Chapman has looked like he's picking up where he left off last season, the bullpen as a whole has posted some ugly numbers: A 1.455 WHIP (20th in baseball as of Thursday afternoon), a 4.50 ERA (also 20th) and a .220 opponents' batting average (14th).

Sounds concerning on the surface, but the Red Sox have plenty of potency where it matters. With Justin Slaten, Garrett Whitlock and Chapman at the back end of the bullpen, they won't be losing many games when leading after six innings. 

That being said, getting to the seventh when a starter can't get through the fourth might be an issue, but that's hardly unique to the Red Sox. Johan Oviedo (acquired in the Jhostnynxon Garcia trade) had a horrific Red Sox debut, giving up four runs (all earned) on six hits and a walk in 3.2 innings of work. He -- along with Greg Weissert and Danny Coulombe -- will be better than their 2026 debuts might have indicated. 

The Issue: Alex Cora's Investment
Rating: 2.5 Roenickes

Alex Cora has won a World Series as the manager of the Boston Red Sox ... but at this point, it was nearly a decade ago. He then almost made the World Series (but not really) in 2021. The Red Sox have played in a grand total of three playoff games since then, and they've lost two of them. 

At a certain point, Cora is going to have to add another feather in his cap. A real one. Yet when it comes to his investment level, it can be difficult to get a proper read.

He showed up to spring training two years ago, sharing a new outlook on life, one that didn't involve him managing for the long term. With some of his veiled (and not-quite-as-veiled) comments about the roster he was given, he kind of sounded like he had one foot out the door that year ... right up until he signed an extension that July. Then he was back on the Good Ship Lollipop.

Now? It would be difficult to say the manager has full control of his team.

For one, his hitters have shown zero understanding of how and when to use the ABS challenge system. Carlos Narvaez is 1-for-4 on challenges, and he ended up mysteriously benched in Wednesday's finale in Houston. Anthony, Mayer and Rafaela have all lost challenges in low-leverage situations. Any and all misunderstandings of the proper usage of challenges should have been ironed out in spring training. That it carried over into the regular season? That falls on the manager.

There are certainly questions about the lineup, too. Batting Jarren Duran third feels like a hope more than a strategy. And what does Wilyer Abreu have to do to hit third or cleanup? How did Masataka Yoshida earn the three spot?

And of course, Cora was asleep at the wheel when Bello should have had a strikeout but instead issued a walk on three balls.

The fact that a Bad News Bears sequence of chucking the ball around the infield is what distracted Cora and everyone else from knowing the count speaks to the issue of the Red Sox continuing their trend of not crossing their T's, dotting their I's, and throwing baseballs where they're supposed to go all the time. Again, it's hard to look anywhere other than the manager for the root of that problem.

All of that being said, when Cora's good, he's real good. Nobody will ever confuse him for Roenicke. (Again, much respect to Roenicke. Thanks for being a sport, Ron. We needed you here.) But his first week of 2026 has been all sorts of terrible. He's never one to put too much stress on his players this early in the season, but if Fenway's opening weekend vs. the Padres goes poorly, he may have to reach into his bag of tricks to find a new course of action.

Put it all together, and it's ugly at the moment. After the bunting is rolled out, after the players get introduced with the accompanying organ, after the massive American flag unfurls over the Green Monster, it'll be back to baseball. And if it goes poorly, the locals may let their frustrations be known. It could get a little awkward, and the terrible start to the season will feel a lot more real to the players and staff on this team.

But really, the composition of the roster is not bad. It's certainly not great, and it may barely be good. But it's good enough for this year to have some meaning, even if that ultimately just means staying afloat in the wild-card race.

That is to say this: We're closing the cover on the panic button. Now's not the time to sound the alarms.

Though ... you know, check back in with me on Monday. Just in case.