Alex Cora Gives Blunt Assessment Of Red Sox’s Recent Hitting Woes

The Philadelphia Phillies have one of the best starting rotations in baseball, and the Boston Red Sox are finding that out the hard way.

The Red Sox haven’t been able to muster much offense during the first two games of their road series with the Phillies this week, managing just three runs and 12 hits in the two games combined (both losses). After scoring two runs on eight hits in Monday’s fluky 3-2 loss, they tallied only one run on four hits in Tuesday’s 4-1 defeat.

Boston’s bats have been overwhelmed by Philadelphia’s starting pitching. Zack Wheeler and Cristopher Sánchez yielded just three runs while racking up 22 strikeouts in 15 innings.

Following Sánchez’s complete-game masterpiece on Tuesday, Alex Cora gave a blunt assessment of his team’s recent offensive woes.

“Two of the best pitchers in the big leagues. That’s the reason they’re good,” Cora said after Tuesday’s loss. “If we want to play in October, we have to find a way to hit those guys.”

One issue for the Red Sox is that their rookies had never faced Wheeler or Sánchez before, making a difficult assignment even tougher.

Still, Boston’s lineup has been cold for a while now, dating back to before the All-Star Break. The Red Sox have scored two runs or fewer in five of their last seven games, averaging 2.1 runs per game and going 3-4 during that span.

After destroying the Colorado Rockies and Washington Nationals a few weeks ago, Boston still needs to prove it can hit quality pitching. That will be essential if this team wants to make the playoffs and make a deep run in October.

The Red Sox will try to salvage the series finale and avoid the sweep on Wednesday against Jesús Luzardo, who’s 8-5 with a 4.29 ERA, a 2.87 FIP and the seventh-most strikeouts in the National League. Boston will counter with Lucas Giolto, who’s 6-2 with a 3.59 ERA.