HOUSTON — Only a dozen days have passed since the Boston Red Sox flirted with hope, having pulled to within 5 1/2 games of the first-place New York Yankees in the American League East with a 5-3 win at Fenway Park.
Late Wednesday afternoon, before Boston extended its losing skid to seven games, Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington conducted a pregame meeting with the media that felt more like a funeral. After Boston suffered its eighth consecutive loss Thursday, a setback that left them 12 games out of first, the sobering mood was unavoidable.
“It’s tough,” said Red Sox left-hander Craig Breslow, who surrendered a walk-off home run to Astros second baseman Jose Altuve on Thursday night. “We were playing pretty good baseball going into the (All-Star) break. It seems we’ve had some untimely days off, breaks, just as we are getting some momentum, and something obviously slows us down.”
Without explicitly waving the white flag, Cherington seemed to acknowledge that his offseason efforts to rebuild the Red Sox had proven futile. Boston finished 25 games out of first place in 2014, rebuilt their rotation while adding a pair of pricey free agents (third baseman Pablo Sandoval and left fielder Hanley Ramirez), and was a trendy pick to contend for a division title. But a winless road trip all but sealed their fate, with glaring weaknesses seemingly up and down the roster. The veteran perspective calls for a focus on tomorrow, but the Red Sox have faltered so dramatically that it will be difficult for them to recover now.
“Obviously it’s not a very good (road) trip,” Boston left-hander Wade Miley said. “From a team standpoint, it’s not something you want to do coming out of the All-Star Break. It’s in the past now; we’ve got to move on.”