Rob Refsnyder is hardly the face of the Boston Red Sox. But he said exactly what the team and fans alike have been feeling through the first third of the 2025 season.
“Yeah, we just got to figure it out,” Refsnyder said after Boston's Memorial Day 3-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers. “There are some good at-bats here and there, but we’re just not getting the job done. It’s not for a lack of effort or work ethic, game planning. We’re not doing it. We suck right now.”
Red Sox manager Alex Cora made a similar statement after the loss.
"Right now, we're not putting a complete game together," he said. "You look around, it's just up and down. We haven't been consistent offensively the last three days, and that's the reason we haven't scored too many."
Just after the Red Sox split a four-game series with the last-place Orioles, they dropped their series-opening game against the sub-.500 Brewers. Boston hasn't been as good as advertised despite its offseason additions and top prospect promotions, and Alex Bregman's "significant injury" has recently put the severity of its issues in perspective.
Rob Refsnyder didn't hold back after Red Sox lost their 14th one-run game to Brewers on May 26
Garrett Crochet has posted a 2.04 ERA over 75 innings, but the Red Sox are 4-for-4 in his starts. They've left 30 men on base in their last four games and they've lost their 14th one-run affair. Boston has established itself as phenomenally un-clutch.
Refsnyder's comments should be a wake-up call for the Red Sox. With June looming and July and the season's halfway point not far behind, a fourth-place record is not going to cut it for a team that hasn't made the postseason in the last three years. Inconsistency is the hallmark of Boston's season — the offense either scores 19 runs or struggles to plate one. It's nothing short of a miracle that the Red Sox are the only MLB team that hasn't been shut out this year.
Boston's 499 strikeouts are the third-most in baseball, but its 143 strikeouts with runners in scoring position, 16 more than the closest team in the AL, tell the whole story. The Red Sox's offensive additions have delivered — Bregman is slashing .299/.385/.553 and breakout catcher Carlos Narváez has had similar success, batting .297/.362/.478 — but they're not finishing the job.
The Red Sox haven't made any changes to the lineup unless they were made out of necessity. Marcelo Mayer and Roman Anthony can't be expected to save the team, but the former was only called up out of utter desperation. Anthony is bored in Triple-A, slashing .321/.453/.518, and there's no longer any excuse for him not to be part of the Sox's struggling offense.
Boston needs to make changes to be a serious contender. Still, it continues playing the same underwhelming lineup in a similar order and wasting quality outings from pitchers, like Crochet's May 26 start or Lucas Giolito's scoreless, seven-inning outing from May 24.
Refsnyder is one of the few veterans on the Red Sox, and it's nice to hear someone act like the veteran in the room and seriously discuss the team's issues. However, it would be better to hear that level of care from someone who has played more than 19 games this season. Without Bregman, the Red Sox need another leader to step up and carry the team out of mediocrity.