Losers of five in a row: the offensive play of the Boston Red Sox through one week of the season

Wednesday 4/1/26

The Red Sox dropped their fifth game in a row today to the Houston Astros. The season is six games old and this team owns a five-game losing streak. They have struck out thirty-eight times in the last three games. The catcher was pulled out of the line-up shortly before the game started and it wasn't because of health. Oh. That's a wonderful sign.

Can someone tell me how this hitting coach--who, apparently, presides over a large staff of hitting coaches with ridiculous, made up, corporate-sounding names like approach director or whatever--continues to have a job with the team that strikes out more than Charlie Brown's crew ever did year after year? The defense, as it is every season, is piss poor, with six errors in six games. They couldn't even win with Garret Crochet on the hill today, not that he was very good.

No team that has started 1-5 has ever won 100 games. Okay, this team wasn't going to do that, but do I really need to have this off the theoretical table a week into the damn season? We can't so much as toy with the notion? You have to take away that mathematical possibility pretty much when the season hadn't even begun this time last week? I don't know how many teams that have started 1-5 have made the playoffs, but it can't be many.

This looks like a dead ass team, with a pouty manager, no leadership, no discipline, no awareness, with their heads not in the game. How long until they're back to .500? Because you have to start asking that question now.

I don't want to hear that it's early. It's never early once the games are for real. Especially when you're a team with little room for error in what could prove to be a stacked division.

Thirteen strikeouts three games in a row. I don't know, geniuses, maybe mix up that approach a bit and stop swinging from you ass? We got a team of Harmon Killebrews here. They put so little pressure on the opponent's defense. I could be out there in center field scratching my ass without getting exposed against these Red Sox. Scratch here, scratch there, they're not going to hit to me.

Also: I hate everything that baseball has become, which is hardly baseball. I hate the ABS thing possibly more than any rule change ever.

Another home run for Abreau, so that was a positive. Roman Anthony had the day off to get his head right, until, that is, he didn't and Cora sent him up to pinch hit. Unsure what that was about. Usually the struggling player gets the whole day off, and it wasn't like the game was all that in reach. Anthony homered, though, so maybe that helps him.

The Sox of recent years drive me crazy with how they play. They don't change. The defense may be worse than the strikeouts. There's just something so...offensive...about running out a piss poor defensive squad year after year. It offends me.

Fun fact: The 2013 and 2018 Boston Red Sox never lost more than three games in a row.

Also: The people who say, "It's early" almost always know nothing about baseball, baseball history, sports, life, or anything. This is happening. It's going on right now. It counts and it's alarming. They could win ten in a row and they likely wouldn't be in first, and might not be in second.

It may end up being fine, ultimately, but I don't see how you can know this sport, see what I see from this team, see this roster, see these holes, both on the field and in the clubhouse where you have a dumb ass and toxic guy like the immature Jarren Duran as one of your chief veteran players, know how this manager runs hot and cold depending on how things are going for him, see this pathetic defense which isn't going to improve much, and simply say, "It's early!"

They better come out smoking at home and start winning some series or they could be fucked fast and this will never morph into a competitive baseball season. You start really bad and it snowballs and you're chasing a .500 record in July. You're spending all that time playing catching up, both with the other teams and yourself.

And obviously I know the 2011 team got off to a terrible start. Why don't you look at that roster and compare it with this one. They still didn't make the playoffs thanks to an epic September collapse, but that team had lots of talent. You think this one does? Compared to who? The big boys? They may have more than the MLB middlers, but that's not saying a lot.

And I don't know that they do. I don't have any reason to believe this team has a single minor star, offensively speaking, in 2026. Is it Anthony? I don't know that. Is it Abreau? I don't know that either. He hasn't been one to date. Will he be this year? Would it be surprising if he isn't? Of course not. So then who are we talking? Trevor Story? Do you really expect close to what you got from him last year? I don't. Triston Casas had a setback today. They're shutting him down for a while. The floor is lower than the ceiling is high is what I'm saying.

This team doesn't make simple baseball plays, year in, year out. When they need the hitter to put the ball in play, and to do so to the right side of the infield, it's like that hitter never can. They don't do situational baseball. You can say blah blah blah exit velocity blah blah blah, but you still have to play the game that this still somewhat, in theory, remains. You can't seriously contend, and sustain success, playing the way this organization has its team play baseball. Sure, I guess you could if you paid for stars, but you don't pay for stars. You're trying to do this on the relative cheap. So you can't play with your head always up your ass.

Anyway...let's go Celtics! Let's go Celtics! Let's go Celtics!

38 strikeouts. Are you kidding me? 38! Sally Brown put the ball in play more than these guys do. They make Dave Kingman (hail the mighty Kong) look like Nellie Fox. And for those who don't know, because you probably won't look it up unless you're studying this record and/or writing something about it, Kingman was a guy who played in the 1970s and 1980s who was treated like he was some degenerate who didn't belong in society on account of how much he struck out, which isn't actually that much by the standards of today, and Nellie Fox was a player from the 1950s and 1960s who struck out less than almost everyone who has ever played the game. I'm not going to explain Sally Brown to you.