The Boston Red Sox have had a troubling season all around. They really didn’t put the 2018 season behind them, they should’ve closed that book.
The Boston Red Sox came into the 2019 season off a 108-win regular season and a World Series championship. From the start of spring training in 2019, the Sox were off to a slow start.
Boston started April with a 12-14 record and win percentage of .462%. In May, they improved to 16-11, followed by a 15-12 record in June, 15-10 in July, and 8-9 so far in August.
Throughout the season, manager Alex Cora has talked about the run they had last year and didn’t close the book on 2018, which hurt them this year. They are currently 6.5 games back in the Wild Card with a little over a month to go in the season. With Chris Sale now on the 10- day injured list, it looks like their season is a wash.
The Red Sox seemed to have a different attitude going into this year. They saw how everything worked out last year and thought they could do it again this year, but everyone has been having a down year. The Sox couldn’t win games with Sale or David Price pitching. You’re not going to make the postseason if you can’t win games when your aces pitch. Their bullpen is a mess and worse than last year with different guys coming in for the closer role. Finally, you have Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, and guys that stood out last year, and not this year.
Against bad teams, the Sox are 30-17 after sweeping the Baltimore Orioles last weekend. Against the good teams, the Sox are 12-21 with a .364 winning percentage. They aren’t going to make the playoffs if they can’t beat the Yankees or the Rays. The Sox play both teams four more times. The Sox taking care of the bad teams is good but not good enough there’s little room for error with this team now and not a lot of time remaining in the schedule.
The Sox have never been in first place in the division this season. Last year, they were in first place 178 days during the season and had 56 games over .500. This year, they’ve only been as high as 12 games over .500. The Sox also have a better away record (34-27) than home record (33-32) this year. They have more away games than home games to close the season out so that might work in their favor.
As the Sox look to make the playoffs, every game has to be taken seriously from now to the end of the season. Games against the Yankees and Rays will have a playoff atmosphere. There’s no way they’ll win the division but if they continue to beat the bad teams they can win a Wild card spot. They should either be sweeping or taking two out of three from every series from here on out. It’s hard to do with the lack of pitching they have and injuries but can be possible if they stop bringing up what happened a year ago.