With the Red Sox having lost six of their last eight games, manager Alex Cora is thinking more about how to fix that problem than he is about the upcoming postseason.
The Boston Red Sox have been the most dominant team in Major League Baseball this year with a record of 90-42.
They’ve maintained a firm grip on first place in the AL East, as well as the top spot in all of baseball, since early July when they finally pulled away from the second-place New York Yankees.
For months, it’s seemed like the Red Sox have been destined for the playoffs and they even stretched their lead over the Yankees to as many as 10.5 games in August.
But Boston has stumbled into a tailspin over the last week, dropping six of its last eight games, while the Yankees have won 16 of their last 21. The gap separating them in the AL East has shrunk down to just 6.5 games.
Plain and simple, the Red Sox have not been playing good baseball at all recently, and that was on full display at Tropicana Field this weekend when they were swept by the Tampa Bay Rays, who outscored them 24-5 in three games.
Though many Boston fans have been thinking about the playoffs since April, manager Alex Cora isn’t concerning himself with what is still over a month away.
The Red Sox are in the process of choking away a very big lead in the division, and if they don’t get back to playing good baseball the way they did for the first four months of the season, they are going to be in serious trouble. That’s where Cora’s mind is right now, as it should be.
"“Like I told you guys, there was a point in the season when we were 17-2, and then you look up and we were tied with those guys (the Yankees),” Cora said via the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier. “Whoever is thinking way ahead, hey man, that’s great, but I’m thinking about start playing good baseball today and we go from there.”"
Cora is right on the money. Fans can think about the playoffs if they want to, but the Red Sox can’t be concerning themselves with October when they might have to spend all of September fending off the Yankees.
After all, the last thing they want is to be forced into a one-game playoff against either the Houston Astros or Oakland A’s in the wild-card game.