There's a reason why they're "only" 12-16 this month. They're terrible around the edges. Their depth is non-existent. The defense is terrible. The baserunning has been awful. The situational hitting has been subpar since the All Star Break because by all appearances they are pressing badly. The relief pitching has been awful because they have been overused. And the starting pitching hasn't gone deep enough into games.
They also are undergoing a severe crisis of confidence. Every mistake they make costs them a game. Every. Single. One. Vazquez forgetting the outs and not scoring in CLE. Barnes making the one bad pitch to Springer at just the right time to lose the game in TOR. Houck getting pulled early and the bullpen immediately imploding. And they're only playing worse as time goes on, they are eroding in every area.
On and on and on it goes. They're losing to the teams they need to beat to stay in contention. A 2-8 road trip in TB, DET, and TOR. Swept in NY. 1-7 vs TB since July 30. The only reason they even managed to be 12-16 in August is because they went 9-3 against BAL, TEX, MIN, and CLE, all TERRIBLE teams. I suppose that's encouraging if they were expected to face one of those teams in the postseason but we know that's not the case. As soon as they faced an opponent of any type of quality they lost, and that badly.
I have never, and I mean ever, seen a team with such poor self-confidence since the Sox of Sept. 2011. You can see it in their reactions after every big out or mistake. Devers threw his helmet about 20 feet last night. Vazquez is playing in an utter fog. Verdugo is chasing pitches a foot out of the zone. They are panicking.
As for "well what were you expecting at the beginning of the season," that's a disingenuous question. In 2013 they were expected to be around .500 after the mess that was 2012; it's a damn good thing they didn't hold themselves to such a low standard that year. They played .604 ball in the first half of the season, they've played .465 ball in the second half. That's a massive collapse, and while you can say they weren't as good as 604 might indicate, playing .604 in the first place indicates they had more quality than assuming they were a .500 team. There's no earthly reason for them to be this bad.
It's unacceptable to play .465 in the second half, unacceptable to lose TEN GAMES to TB in 30 days, unacceptable to only be able to beat teams that are 40 games under .500. You can expect some regression from .604, and so did I, honestly. But to play .465? No, I did not and do not expect that. That's a 75 win pace for the full year and no one here would have accepted that at all.
What frustrates me immensely is that they had put themselves in position to make some noise this year unexpectedly with their strong first half. They were looking like a fun team, and getting a good year was such a relief after the emotional disaster of 2020 and the Betts trade. That would have been a nice feeling to have. But they've thrown that all away with poor play, lackluster managing, a curious lack of urgency at the trade deadline, and error after unforced error that spirals on them. We could have had something nice.
I think this post is pretty dead on.
The team may have been "overachieving" the first four months. But that's a long goddamn time to overachieve and assign that to "luck." They produced five deserving all-stars and should have had a sixth in Whitlock. They had the
best record in the AL as late as 7/28. To Bloom's credit, he has added three excellent players below all-star caliber, but with solid WAR/etc., at reasonable salaries in K. Hernandez, Renfroe, and Verdugo - precisely the kind of players you need to fill out a high quality team (we might even add Arroyo to this list). He improved the pen significantly adding Whitlock, Ottavino, and Sawamura.
The collapse has been a very particular concoction of lack of depth, some regression to the mean, some weaknesses that were there but masked for a while, some weaknesses exacerbated by the deadline moves (Schwarber DH-ing pushing JD into the outfield, two new bullpen arms that were worse than the guys they pushed down to AAA), some bad - often devastatingly bad - managing, organizational lack of urgency at and just after the deadline, horribly unfocused/dumb play resulting in an endless parade of unforced errors, injuries, and now COVID.
There is no single cause for their woes, so no absolute scapegoats here. But remove any one or two of this laundry list and the whole season might look different, as the dominos then go in different directions. I think both Bloom and Cora, respectively, bear a great deal of responsibility for this collapse (and I regard both with much more skepticism than I did going into the season). I believe this IS a team, at full strength, with Sale back, and crafty deadline additions, that could have done (can do?) damage in the post season.
But now, adding the COVID cases, they're caught in a rip-tide so powerful that there's probably no getting back to shore.
But they were teetering even before this outbreak, and that's more about the players, the coaching, and the front office, than this crazy externality. And I see this collapse absolutely as a blown opportunity by the team and organization, and not an inevitable outcome. They very well COULD have won the division. But even with a wildcard spot, once in the playoffs, who knows what happens. Shit, the 1987 Twins won 85 games, the 2006 Cardinals won 83 games, to name a couple.
Maybe something miraculous happens here and Sox make it in, though the loss of so many guys now is likely the final and fatal blow. Upsetting on its own, given the reason (and here's to the health of everyone in the organization), but also upsetting because it's a red herring, and I fear may well obscure critical analysis of what went wrong prior to the outbreak.