Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports
After seven straight losses, one might think that the Boston Red Sox would finally start to gain a sense of team unity, but that certainly isn’t the case. After losing to the Atlanta Braves 4-2, one wonders where the Red Sox can go from here. The Red Sox are a team full of All-Star caliber players that just can’t pull together and make their individual efforts a team effort.
The very first at-bat of the game was very telling of this. Jace Peterson hit a very routine pop-up to shallow left field, yet Hanley Ramirez and Xander Bogaerts practically collided without ever deciding on who should make the out. Ramirez managed to make the out, but practically took the ball out of Bogaerts’ glove to do so.
Of course players make mistakes, but what makes the situation worse is that this was not the only time the exact same thing happened. Two innings later, Mike Napoli and Dustin Pedroia did the exact same thing.
Simple flubs like this show exactly how out of sync the Red Sox are this season. Their fielders don’t communicate. When the bats are working, their pitching suffers and when the pitching is hot, their bats are frozen. The Red Sox are headed for their second straight losing season, and it will be interesting to see how a team that won the World Series just two years ago will proceed to handle two very poor seasons in a row.
Before this season, it seemed as though the acquisitions of Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, as well as the rise of potential future star Mookie Betts, would help the lackluster group of New England misfits thrive in a division that appears to be getting less competitive by the season.
Even the box score tells the story of the Red Sox’s disparate efforts. The Braves had one less hit than the Red Sox, but the Red Sox’s efforts were individualistic. Although the Red Sox started a rally in the bottom of the ninth inning and came close to breaking their streak, they just couldn’t pull it off. This year’s Red Sox are a welcome reminder that All-Star players don’t make teams. Unity makes teams, and the Red Sox just don’t have that this season.
Christopher Nicastro is a Boxing Beat Writer for www.RantSports.com. You can follow him on Twitter, ‘like’ Rant Sports on Facebook, or add him to your network on Google.
