BOSTON — Here, should you need it, is a comprehensive list of all the positives that took place for the Red Sox in their 6-1 loss to the Texas Rangers Tuesday night:
1) The mop-up relief duo of Brennan Bernardino and Sean Newcomb were excellent, combining for 5.2 innings of scoreless relief in the aftermath of starter Lucas Giolito’s early flameout.
2) First baseman du jour Abraham Toro acquitted himself well, making all the necessary plays in the field, while contributing a single and a hard-hit lineout.
That’s it. That’s the list.
The rest was as ugly as the weather, which caused a 31-minute delay at the start and was bad enough to keep most of the 29,858 paying customers far away from Fenway Park.
Lucky them.
There was otherwise nothing to recommend. Giolito was shelled for six runs on 10 hits over 3.2 innings. A week ago, making his Red Sox debut in Toronto, Giolito successfully changed speeds and worked his way through a mediocre Blue Jays lineup until he tired in his final inning of work.
That wasn’t the case this time. He skipped a pitch past batterymate Carlos Narvaez in the first to lead to the first Texas run. After navigating around some trouble in the second and third, he walked into a buzzsaw in the fourth, yielding five hits to the first six hitters he faced that inning and seven to the first nine. Of the two outs he record in the fourth before being mercifully lifted, one was a sacrifice fly that produced one of the five runs that crossed the plate that inning.
“It was terrible,” Giolito confessed when asked about his outing. “I gave up a bunch of base hits in a row. It’s not doing my job. I didn’t have command; that kind of did my in.”
Giolto attempted to attack a slumping Texas lineup almost exclusively with his fastball and changeup. But he couldn’t locate with any precision and his fastball, which reached 94-95 mph last week, lacked its customary zip.
Giolito wasn’t the only one to struggle. The lineup produced just six hits, four of which were singles. The Sox had just two baserunners through the first four innings. Only once did the Red Sox put the leadoff man on base.
Only once all night did the Red Sox send more than four hitters to the plate in a single inning. After a stretch in which they seemed intent on making better contact, they’ve reverted back to a more free-swinging approach, striking out 10 times. In the last seven games – all but one a loss — the team has struck out nine times or more on six occasions.
As was the case during the first week of the season, the lineup features multiple holes from top to bottom. Not even six weeks into his major league career, Kristian Campbell is being asked to serve as the team’s cleanup hitter — not because he’s the best choice for the role, but rather, by default.
Particularly concerning is the slump being endured by Trevor Story, who has six hits in his last 50 at-bats — all of them singles. Story was hitless in four trips with a groundout and three strikeouts and appears lost at the plate.
Always a streaky hitter even when he was going well, the current cold stretch is more than a little alarming. In a lineup that often still tilts lefthanded, the Sox can ill-afford to not get any production from one of the few proven run producers from the right side.
“I’m not concerned,” insisted Alex Cora. “It’s part of the season. Are we happy with what’s going on? Of course not. We believe we’re better and it hasn’t happened. But we’re going to keep working. We’re going to be better, we know that, hopefully sooner rather than later.”
It’s Cora job to present a confident public face when things aren’t going well and exhibiting panic less than a quarter of the way through the season is hardly a good idea.
But perhaps Cora has reason to worry at least some. The Red Sox are in the midst of a relatively easy part of the schedule — the Rangers are the third straight opponent who began their series with the Red Sox with a losing record. In those seven games across those three series, the Red Sox are 2-5.
With upcoming series against Kansas City, Detroit, Atlanta, and the New York Mets on the horizon, things are only going to get more challenging.
For now, the Red Sox are experimenting with different ways to lose — a few bullpen hiccups here, a few stinkers turned in by the rotation there, and always, it seems, difficulty maintaining a consistent offensive attack.
Throw in the team’s patchwork plan at first, and they seem lifeless. The similarly mediocre play from the rest of the teams in their division has kept them from falling behind, but that can’t be expected to continue.
And history shows that rooting for your competition to keep you afloat isn’t a winning formula.
BETTING: Red Sox moneyline is -120 on BetMGM for Wednesday’s game against the Rangers. If you’re new to betting and want to learn more, check out our Massachusetts beginner’s guide.
