Commentary

How two weeks erased a season’s worth of Red Sox goodwill, and how to fix it

The Red Sox are 2-9 in their last 11 games, watching the Rays pass them for the AL East lead while the Blue Jays and Yankees close the gap.

Xander Bogaerts and the Red Sox lost three of four in Toronto this weekend, adding to recent concerns about the team. Cole Burston/Getty Images

By Jon Couture

August 9, 2021

4 minutes to read

The most striking thing about Sunday’s game in Toronto was how much it felt like one the Red Sox have been winning all season.

Not in the sense that teams win games they lead 7-2, or 8-4, or 8-6 with two outs in the eighth and their All-Star closer on the mound — though to be clear, they do win those games, overwhelmingly.

I’m talking about how, for most of this year, they’ve been the unkillable movie monster. Eight times this season, the Red Sox have won a game in which their starter didn’t record an out in the fifth. They’ve won three others on days their starter gave up at least six runs — only one other team, the Angels, has done that more than once.

They do not quit. They chip away. They manage the absurd. And on Sunday, just when it felt like a bewildering stretch of bad baseball had broken, they had it done to them.

On Sunday, Toronto starter Hyun Jin Ryu couldn’t finish the fourth inning, giving up 10 hits and seven runs and apparently burying his team. The Sox, who hadn’t scored more than five runs since July 23, kept adding, finishing with eight runs and 16 hits.

You want to know how many teams lost games this year in which they had 16 hits? Before Sunday, just 3 of 39, and one of them was Toronto at Fenway Park on June 11 when the Sox came from 5-1 down in the sixth.

Then, Sunday. Two in the fifth, two in the seventh, and three in the eighth when Matt Barnes walked No. 9 hitter Reese McGuire and somewhat inexplicably threw a second straight fastball to old UConn teammate George Springer.

Eleven mornings ago, the Red Sox were 63-40, tied for the American League’s best record. They’re 2-9 since, while the Jays (10-2), Rays (8-2), and Yankees (8-3) have played some of their best baseball.

North of the border, a playoff berth is now an “expectation.” In Tampa, the division lead is a season-high four games. And what was an eight-game Red Sox cushion over Seattle, the first team out of a playoff spot, on the morning of July 29 is now just 2.5 games on New York, the team it felt like Boston buried last month.

When we last spoke, I was expecting the complement move to the ill-fitting Kyle Schwarber acquisition. It never came (with apologies to Hansel Robles and Austin Davis), and now Schwarber has reportedly had a groin-related setback during his rehab.

Whether the Red Sox did not do more because of luxury-tax concerns (the Twins including salary in the Robles deal feels like a tell), not-mortgaging-the-future ones, or both, is a question I can’t answer. But I feel comfortable saying we will collectively remember this season as much for July 30 denying what it “could have been” instead of the uplifting thing it has been.

That’s not entirely rational when the American League has three no-doubt pennant contenders (Houston, White Sox, Tampa) and three more (Yankees, Toronto, Oakland) who wouldn’t look out of place winning it. But you cry poverty, you get what you get.

(I’ve spent a week waiting not to be a ranting maniac about the trade deadline in print, and it got me Sunday. Distilling it to this feels like a victory.)

And so, here we are. The Red Sox are still in playoff position, though now would be hosting the A’s in a wild-card game. Chris Sale returns Saturday. Tanner Houck returns … some time. The offense looked like the offense of old, though in a losing effort. The COVID land mine the Sox have danced around all season has two coaches marooned in Canada, though they should consider themselves lucky J.D. Martinez and Jarren Duran tested negative in time not to be there with them.

A run like Boston’s current one isn’t unique among contenders by any stretch. The Astros and the Dodgers each lost 9 of 11 in April. The Yankees opened 5-10, got hot for a month, and promptly lost 13 of 18. Tampa lost 12 of 16 before a pre-All-Star run. The White Sox lost 9 of 14 before sweeping the Cubs this weekend.

To watch Boston squander its cushion in a fortnight hurts, especially when the late-game confidence with which it built it feels gone in an instant. They are not the equal of those other teams on paper, certainly not after their front office chose the nebulous future over obvious fixes in a winnable present.

But this is the resilience they’ve thumped their chest about all year, proclaiming Alex Cora the sort of manager who “keeps it loose, keeps it fun, but also knows how to get on the guys and spark us.”

Opportunity knocks immediately, with the Rays landing Tuesday (and getting both Eduardo Rodriguez and Nate Eovaldi). Following that, the only thing other than home series’s against Baltimore, Texas, and Minnesota over the next two and a half weeks is a three-game set at Yankee Stadium.

The Red Sox came into the spring telling anyone who would listen they were far more than another mediocre team, then spent three and a half months proving their boast. On Monday morning, the Globe’s Pete Abraham proclaimed “it’s not too late, but the Sox are 15-18 since July 1 and this feels like who they are.”

Disagree? Ball’s back in your court, boys. The rotation is shorthanded, the bullpen is showing cracks, and the belief you’ve had in yourselves certainly isn’t shared by the front office that shortchanged you at the trade deadline.

Prove all of us wrong, or prove them right. The chance still remains.