12. Boston Red Sox, 76-69, 3rd in the AL East (ranked 13th last week)
The Red Sox are now 18.5 games out of their division and are currently 9 games back of the Athletics for the final Wild Card spot. their rotation has underperformed and regressed, and while Chris Sale is out for the season, his 4.40 ERA on the season isn’t great, but when Rick Porcello and David Price also have ERA’s above 4.00 it starts to paint the picture.
Offensively, the Red Sox still have four batters with an OPS higher than .900 on the season, but their pitching continuously fails them, and it ended up costing President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski his job. The Red Sox President and GM was fired earlier this week after another a 3-7 run over their last 1 0 games, and while it’s not entirely his fault, Dombrowski will take the fall for Boston’s shortcomings. Which shifts the focus of this club from the postseason to what they need to do to fix the reigning roster just one year removed from winning World Series.
11. Chicago Cubs, 77-67, 2nd in the NL Central (ranked 11th last week)
The Cubs are another team like the Red Sox that hasn’t been able to live up to expectations this season, losing six of their last 10 games, they somehow are still holding on to the final NL Wild Card spot but teams are gaining quickly. Their bullpen is missing Craig Kimbrel as Joe Maddon hasn’t been able to settle on one guy to handle the 9th inning, blowing another game late with Steve Cishek walking three consecutive batters and allowing the Padres to literally walk them off Tuesday night.
Their starting pitching is hard to read right now as well, with Yu Darvish having his best stretch ever since arriving in Chicago while veterans Cole Hamels and Jon Lester are starting to look their ages. And then the offense has two of the hottest hitters in the 2nd half in Kyle Schwarber and Nicholas Castellanos, who have combined for 31 home runs and 66 RBI in the 2nd half but still struggle scoring more than two or three runs on certain nights. The talent on paper is much better than the results the Cubs have produced but that’s been the narrative on the North-Side of Chicago for the better part of three seasons now.