The Boston Red Sox were on the verge of a stirring rally on Memorial Day against the Milwaukee Brewers. Trailing all afternoon, Boston's bats woke up in the bottom of the ninth, as two walks and an RBI single from Jarren Duran put the tying run on third and the go-ahead run on first with two outs.
Rafael Devers was up next, the ideal spot for the Red Sox best (healthy) hitter. But Devers never got a chance to take the bat off his shoulder: Instead, the Brewers simply walked him and let closer Trevor Megill face ... backup catcher Connor Wong, who entered Monday with a .394 OPS on the season. If you were looking for a tidy metaphor for the Red Sox offense right now, you could do a lot worse.
Boston's offense has been in freefall of late. A 19-run eruption against the Baltimore Orioles notwithstanding, the Red Sox are averaging just over three runs per game over the last two weeks. Without Alex Bregman and Triston Casas, there are holes all over the infield, and Alex Cora's insistence on sticking with struggling options like Trevor Story, David Hamilton, Abraham Toro and Nick Sogard is only making matters worse. If something doesn't change, and fast, the team could find itself out of the AL East race by the All-Star break.
But that might not be the most long-lasting consequence of this offensive tailspin. Boston's lineup isn't just costing the team games; it's also actively sabotaging its best player, leaving ace Garrett Crochet out to dry.
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Red Sox lineup once again lets Garrett Crochet down, and they have only themselves to blame
Crochet has been as good as anyone could have possibly dreamed when the team acquired him from the Chicago White Sox over the winter. The lefty struck out 11 over 6.2 innings of two-run ball on Monday afternoon, lowering his ERA to a sparkling 2.04. He's been a workhorse, taking the ball every fifth day for a team that's been juggling rotation injuries since Opening Day, and he looks like an ace for years to come.
Which is why it must be so frustrating to watch what's going on around him right about now. Boston scored just two runs in his start on Monday; the team has scored a grand total of five runs over his last two outings combined, and they've scored more than four runs in just three of his 11 starts so far this season.
Crochet is handling this recent funk as well as you could reasonably expect him to. He's a bulldog, and his big contract extension suggests he's more than happy to be pitching in Boston for the foreseeable future. Besides, there's still plenty of time for the Red Sox to figure things out at the plate, and plenty of resources (financial and otherwise) at their disposal to do so. But this sort of treatment can wear on even the most dogged of competitors, and Red Sox fans have to be sick of seeing Crochet Day going to waste over and over again while Cora continues to repeat the same mistakes.
