At the end of May, it finally seemed like things were beginning to fall the Boston Red Sox's way. Jarren Duran hit nine home runs in the month and even Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Caleb Durbin broke out at the plate.
But the Tampa Bay Rays have put Boston's offense back in its place. In the first two games of theirJune 8-10 series, the Red Sox have mustered just 10 hits, four runs and one walk. In the middle game of the series, Boston didn't reach a three-ball count until Mickey Gasper came to the plate as the final hitter of the game.
The Red Sox's offense looked so promising a week ago, just for it all to collapse back to its early-season look. Duran slashed .261/.331/.548 last month but he's fanned 11 times since the calendar flipped to June. Wilyer Abreu's been cold for days with a .220/.266/.356 slash line in his last 15 games. Gasper was one of Boston's hottest hitters from his call-up on May 10 through the end of the month, but he's batting .174/.240/.261 in June. Kiner-Falefa has regressed even further in the last week (.136/.136/.227). You know things are bad when Gasper and Kiner-Falefa's cold spells are crushing the team.
The Rays had been struggling before the Red Sox came to town to give them a free pass back to the win column. Tampa Bay had lost 10 of its last 13 games before its latest series with Boston, including sweeps by the Baltimore Orioles and Detroit Tigers. The Rays haven't been crushing Red Sox pitching by any means, but Boston's offensive ineptitude has made things quite easy on them.
Red Sox’s series loss to struggling Rays shows offense might be unsalvageable
Once a team gets out in front of the Red Sox on the scoreboard at any time, there's a good chance they'll go on to win the game. Boston has a hideous 0-27 record when trailing by three runs or more any time and a 0-35 record when it's trailed in the eighth inning.
The Red Sox may have reached an unsalvageable point after their two losses to the Rays. Craig Breslow and the front office are seemingly insistent on buying ahead of the trade deadline, but Boston just dropped to 11 games below .500 for the first time since 2020. The only team in the American League with a worse record is the Los Angeles Angels.
Roman Anthony is nowhere near a return and he wasn't the player the Red Sox expected when he was healthy. The one right-handed bat the front office could land on the trade market may not be enough to save this team if no one else can hit consistently enough to win three games in a row.
The season isn't even half over, but if the Red Sox commit to selling in this year's market, they might be better off — this team doesn't have the bats to last more than one playoff series and adding one more hitter in a trade can only do so much.
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