Another slumbering Red Sox September the fault of many, all the way to the top

For the third straight year, a once-promising Red Sox season has petered out in September as lack of depth and injuries have caught up to them.

It’s incredible how far away it all feels, when in reality, they really were quite close.

In May, a game like Thursday’s at Yankee Stadium would be a hopeful sign. The Red Sox hung tough with a genuine contender. The potential top seed in the American League playoffs was gettable all night long. Cooper Criswell gave up a home run seven pitches in, then little else into the sixth. Five relievers left that run New York’s only one into the 10th.

The big hit just never came.

Heck, most any hit never came. Not only did the Red Sox muster just four, and none in 13 cracks with a man in scoring position, their expected batting average (based on exit velocity and launch angle) was .161. That can happen when 14 of your 30 outs are strikeouts. (The Yankees, with only seven hits, posted a .339.)

“It’s been going on for a while,” manager Alex Cora told reporters. “We haven’t hit.”

After Wilyer Abreu followed Danny Jansen’s solo homer in the fifth, 13 straight Red Sox went down. Incredibly, in that homer-happy bandbox, it remained right there, one run away. Cora threw the sink at it, didn’t get it, and now the bullpen’s a bit of a mess with three games to play.

It’s been right there, and similarly left wanting. Going 21-30 since roaring into the All-Star break has left the Red Sox 4.5 games behind the Twins with 15 to play, which means that just 25-26 would have them a half-game out, in a genuine dogfight. Merely being better than .500 would have them among the hunted.

They did the hard part. They were five back in the division, never mind the wild card, when Jarren Duran, Tanner Houck, and Rafael Devers held tickets to Texas for the All-Star Game.

Look at ’em now. Houck, who had a “dead shoulder” (in Cora’s words) after starting last Wednesday against the Mets, is penciled for a 29th start on Friday night. His first out will make it 170 innings this season.

Duran, who has played every game he wasn’t suspended for, has one extra-base hit in his last 12 games and one stolen base attempt in his last 20. (The 20 games before that, he had 13 extra-base hits and was 10 for 10 on steals.)

And Devers being shut down for the year figures to follow three seconds after Cora and the braintrust surrender the postseason fight. The shoulder issue that led Devers to skip the All-Star Game ultimately saw him sit for three games in late August. Since that break, he’s 8-for-50 (.160) with one double, no homers, and 13 strikeouts.

Nestor Cortes threw him six four-seam fastballs on Thursday night. Devers took two for strikes, and swung and missed at the other four. It was the second time this season Cortes fanned Devers three times in a game, but still.

Find five more wins from their 73 losses? Take your pick just from those 30 after the break, which we can easily split into two parts.

You remember the bullpen terrible era. From July 19-Aug. 19, the Sox lost seven games they led in the seventh inning or later. Twice, they had such a lead, lost it, regained it, then lost anyway.

You know that. Made all the papers. Less noted: Since Aug. 19, it hasn’t happened once.

It’s been replaced by nights like Thursday. Series like the one in Queens, where Boston didn’t lead once despite the Mets scoring just four in the opener, just two in the first six innings of the second game, and the third game being 4-3 for its majority.

October was put in doubt by the bullpen, then buried by the offense. And rest assured, it was there for the claiming. Unlike the National League, where Arizona, San Diego, the Dodgers, and the Mets have all played better than .600 baseball since the All-Star break, only three AL teams have managed even .560 — a 90-win pace over 162.

Put another way, that 21-30 run of the Red Sox is just 7.5 games worse than the AL’s top three — Detroit, Kansas City, and Houston — at 28-22. All of whom the Sox have played since the break, and who they were ahead of when they landed at Dodger Stadium in July.

How bad has it been? Their third-worst September offense by OPS of the wild-card era (since 1995), though it must be noted Boston’s .684 OPS these past 11 games is squarely league average.

Red Sox in September: .235/.304/.380 (.684 OPS)

MLB in September: .237/.305/.379 (.684 OPS)

Also? It’s not the worst you’ve seen unless you sleep in a bassinet.

WORST RED SOX SEPTEMBER OPS, 1995-2024

.588 — 2012

.651 — 2023

.684 — 2024 (through Sept. 12)

Indeed, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. Cora’s Red Sox hit even worse last September, when their numbers were roughly 20 percent worse than league average. Devers finished strong then, as did Triston Casas, but Trevor Story, Justin Turner, Alex Verdugo, and Adam Duvall were all dreadful as the Sox neither pitched nor hit.

The fight was over by the end of August, though, when Boston hit 6.5 games out of a postseason place. Not so this time, when a year of having to continually rebuild the lineup puzzle with new pieces finally caught up to them.

Which, ultimately, feels like the lesson here.

This will be the third straight season the Red Sox are a better than .500 team in the first half, and a worse than .500 team in the second. With each year, the split’s grown more severe. This year’s team played .552 baseball before the break and has played .412 baseball after it.

I don’t think that specific part of it means much, but the message is clear: They haven’t had enough. They’ve gotten an absurd amount out of what they have, but over six months of games, there’s only so many rabbits to pull out of hats.

They will, I think we can safely say, shuffle the deck again this winter. Position player strength will become fodder for trades, clearing space for the coming wave of Worcester’s “Big Four” and friends.

The player development machine already had started really bearing fruit before this year, but this winter will be its grand bloom. It’s close.

But it’s also far away, as a year of watching young players work and feel their way into major leaguers has more than made clear.

More will need to be done.

Lest we be left staring at our hands in another bad September, wondering how it slipped through our fingers again.