Even after sweep, the Red Sox’ season is far from over … unless they keep rolling over

COMMENTARY

This is who they are, and I don’t mean that in some overarching, oh-geez-he’s-setting-up-a-metaphor way. I don’t mean that the Red Sox team undressed on their home field the last three days — 6-5 on Monday despite three separate leads behind ace-esque David Price; 8-5 on Tuesday despite 12 hits; and 9-4 on Wednesday despite nine hits, four doubles, and three home runs just from a third of the lineup — by the Tampa Bay Rays will be the version we remember.

We may get there, but we aren’t nearly there yet. Despite what your fatalistic mind is telling you.

Not that fatalism isn’t understandable. The Rays just went 8-1 for the season at Fenway Park despite a full payroll less than what the Red Sox are paying their starting rotation. The Rays, who added Eric Sogard (2 for 4 with two runs scored on Thursday), Jesus Aguilar (2 for 3, on base four times), and reliever Nick Anderson (five swings and misses on 14 pitches in a scoreless eighth) before Wednesday’s 4 p.m. trade deadline, the last chance this season for significant player movement.

“Our front office looks really smart right now, don’t they?” Tampa manager Kevin Cash told reporters. “We’ve played well to get in a spot to where the front office recognized [that] and comes up and makes some little moves that are going to make us better.”

The Red Sox addition made an impact Thursday as well. Andrew Cashner walked five guys for the second time all season. He gave up seven runs and fanned one.

This is who the Red Sox are because this is, short of some callups from a farm system who couldn’t net them one reliever before Wednesday afternoon, who they’ll fight into the fall with. No one else is coming. No big-time reinforcements. They’ll just have to settle for 17 of the 25 players who finished off a 119-win season 10 months ago.

Who knew that Craig Kimbrel, Joe Kelly, Drew Pomeranz, Blake Swihart, Ian Kinsler, Eduardo Nunez, Ryan Brasier (still here, but in Pawtucket), and Steve Pearce (still here, but injured) were worth 30 wins? And that’s if Fangraphs is right and the Sox surge the last two months to a 90-win team. Their 59-51 of Friday morning is only an 87-win pace, a 21-win dropoff from the 108 of last regular season and in the range of the 26 lost in the last attempted title defense between 2013 and 2014.

Of course, that 2014 team had a massive selloff at the July 31 deadline, ultimately snagging four of the above-mentioned 25 (Kelly, plus Heath Hembree, Eduardo Rodriguez and, via flipping Yoenis Cespedes, Rick Porcello) when it was under no illusion it was a contender.

“You can’t believe how many phone calls I got about our bullpen pieces,” No-Dealin’ Dave Dombrowski said on Wednesday.

Matt Barnes is only making $1.6 million, with two more years of team control, and he’s better than his blown save total suggests. I’m sure he got some attention. If the Sox opened last week with three straight losses, how much longer would Dombrowski have listened?

Are we going to wish they did and he did someday?

That’s up to the group that just moped its way to New York.

Just leaving the #RedSox clubhouse…the pain and disappointment of being swept by a team they’re lookin up at had it so heavy in there you can feel it. It’s a different vibe. Mark my words about this one game 110. It’s going to be one to look back on one way or another…

— Jahmai Webster (@WebsterOnTV) August 2, 2019

“I think it might be probably the most disappointing losses of the season so far. It’s a crucial time and a time when we need a win,” said Xander Bogaerts, 4 for 4 with 11 total bases on Thursday, including his first career 24th and 25th home runs. “It feels like one win is hard to come by right now. . . . I feel like we’ve had a lot of chances this whole series. It’s just that one big hit, it seems like they are the ones that are getting it.”

“We didn’t execute,” said Alex Cora of his team on Thursday. “We’ve got to be better . . . The effort has to be there every day. You’re going to go through slumps, through struggles, but there’s a few things you can control and it’s the effort. There are a few things that, effort-wise, it didn’t look good.”

They are just 3.5 games out of the second wild card, trailing an Oakland team with the Cardinals, Cubs, Giants, Yankees, and eight against the Astros left; and a Tampa team they’ll see four times in September (at Tropicana Field, where Boston is 5-1 this year) and without Blake Snell all month. Cleveland is only five up to host the wild-card game. This is by no means over.

The Red Sox need to remind themselves of that, lest they become another team in the annals who took trade deadline inaction as a vote of no confidence. That same 2014 season that the Red Sox sold off, Toronto hit the deadline 1.5 games out of first and locked in a wild-card spot. Needing a starting pitcher or a bat to end a two-decade playoff drought, the Jays did essentially nothing; Jose Bautista openly questioned GM Alex Anthopoulos and the team cratered, sub-.500 the last two months.

Cora and his team made no secret that last year was an anomalous season, in that there was never really any conflict. The Red Sox opened 17-2, took over first alone for good on Fourth of July weekend, and steamrolled three teams in the playoffs. Hardly a character test akin to this season, where every glint of momentum is snuffed out post-haste.

An April sweep in Tampa after the 6-13 start? Swept in a home doubleheader the next day by Detroit.

Winning 11 of 13 into mid-May? Lose Chris Sale’s 17-strikeout game, then potential statement series against Houston (twice), Cleveland, the Yankees, and Tampa.

Actually winning a series at MLB-leading Minnesota? Lose a home series to Toronto.

The team meeting was promised even before Thursday’s mess. Cora won’t lack for topics, I think.

“I think it’s important not because of what people think. It’s just, what’s coming now,” he said. “It’s August 1st, August 2nd, whenever we talk. It’s the reality of where we’re at. They know, but it’s just a reminder.”

Somehow, it feels like they need one.