Massarotti: Red Sox Can't Just Wait For Things To Turn Around
BOSTON (CBS) – The idea for the Red Sox, always, is to win the games they are supposed to win, especially this year, especially now. The Red Sox are supposed to protect late-inning leads. They are supposed to beat bad teams. And mostly they are supposed to win at home.
Even that is now in doubt.
So as the Red Sox lick their wounds today following another late-inning meltdown at Fenway Park, your greatest concerns should have nothing to do with the New York Yankees or Alex Rodrigues or Brad Ziegler. Your greatest concern should be that the Red Sox are now 2-7 in their last nine home games, a stretch during which they have lost to the woeful Minnesota Twins, the contending Detroit Tigers and the astonishingly mediocre New York Yankees.
"We're in a tough stretch of close games not going our way," Red Sox reliever Ziegler told reporters. "At some point, that turns around."
Does it?
Or do a team's flaws and repeated failures in key situations ultimately catch up to them and do them in, the way the Red sox are being done in now?
Let's make something clear here: the Red Sox cannot keep losing games at Fenway Park, whether they are low-scoring, high-scoring or anywhere in between. They cannot lose at home to good teams or bad one. Before the Red Sox embarked on their 11-game road trip to Anaheim, Seattle and Los Angeles last week, we all know the landscape: 41 of the final 63 games on the road, a daunting itinerary for any team, any year.
So they went 5-6 on the trip. Fine. It could have been better and it could have been worse. But the real damage to this team was done just before the Sox left and, now, immediately after they have returned, a time during which the Sox lost a combined 5-of-6 to the Twins and Tigers, then 2-of-3 to the Yankees.
Add it all up and the Red Sox are 7-13 in their last 20 games, in August, which is suicide for any team that wants to make the playoffs. The good news? It's still not too late, as long as the Sox recognize that.
All of this brings us back to Ziegler and the notion that, somehow, the recent losses are a result of luck, that the karma "turns around" and that success in close games is arbitrary? Huh? Yes, Andrew Benintendi caught a bad break last night when Jacoby Ellsbury's liner disappeared in the lights. But the Red Sox repeatedly put themselves in position to by squandering opportunity after opportunity.
And how, exactly, was it bad luck when Mookie Betts got picked off first in Anaheim? Or when Hanley Ramirez carelessly slung a throw over the head of catcher Sandy Leon? Or when Fernando Abad missed in the wrong part of the plate to Robinson Cano? Or when Brock Holt couldn't catch a simple throw? Or when Xander Bogaerts flipped the ball over Dustin Pedroia's head as if it were a live grenade? Or when the Sox bullpen couldn't have found the edges of the plate with a compass on two consecutive nights against the Yankees?
That's not luck, folks. That's a failure to execute. That's fundamental breakdown. That's sloppiness and simple stupidity.
Does that mean the Sox are cooked? No, not yet, not in 2016 in the mass of mediocrity that is the American league. But another road trip looms. In between a three-game home series against the dreadful Arizona Diamondbacks awaits.
And the Red Sox can no longer just show up, especially at home, and wait for things to turn around.
