Alex Cora brutally described Red Sox slow start with challenge to struggling stars

The Boston Red Sox look nothing like the team that was promised after a productive offseason. That's easy to say and feel after the Tampa Bay Rays stomped a mudhole in them on Monday night in a 16-1 beatdown, but it's been going on for a week now. Boston lost three out of four against the lowly White Sox, including an 11-1 drubbing, after being swept by the Blue Jays and then started off the series with Tampa Bay like this.

Vibes-wise, eye-test, Baseball Savant, whatever metric you want to use, it's been awful. So many at-bats have been uncompetitive, so many pitching outings have been seriously misguided, and the defense remains an issue. As such, Red Sox fans far and wide are calling on manager Alex Cora to do something about the obvious problems after an 8-10 start to the season.

Cora didn't mince words after being on the wrong end of the shellacking on Monday against the Rays.

"The defense has been bad," Cora said. "The offense has been bad and we’ve been inconsistent pitching-wise. So those are the three pillars of baseball and we haven’t been good."

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? What's worse is that Cora is absolutely right in this assessment. The defense, which was supposed to be heavily improved with Rafael Devers moving to DH to make way for Alex Bregman at third and with a healthy Trevor Story, has remained frustratingly bad. The offense has been inept since sweeping St. Louis. And the pitching, outside of Garrett Crochet, has been anything but reliable.

For fans wondering what Cora is going to do about all of this as the manager of the team, though, he just did it.

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Alex Cora gets brutal in clear challenge to struggling Red Sox

While Cora took accountability for what's been going wrong with the Red Sox, there are subtleties to being an MLB manager. When you brutally call out the team for not doing quite literally anything well over the past week, the locker room hears that and, especially the stars on the team, are expected to take that as a challenge.

If you need evidence of that, Story was asked about Cora's comments about not preparing the Red Sox for these games, and his response was to take accountability among the players.

"We're the ones out there playing the game," Story said. "There's a certain pride that, when you wear this jersey, you got to put it up and we haven't been doing that. We have to look ourselves in the mirror and we have to be honest with ourselves. There's a lot of baseball to be played. We know the type of team we have, and we can turn it around. I'm confident in that."

Challenge accepted? That's certainly what it sounds like and it seems like Story, one of the leaders in the clubhouse, got the message from Cora. This Red Sox team is constructed to contend — not just win, contend — and they haven't lived up to that. At the end of the day, it's up to the nine guys on the field any given day to make that possible and the manager can only do but so much.

Make no mistake, it shouldn't be anyone writing off Boston just yet. We're 18 games into a 162-game season. At the same time, if what the Red Sox have looked like continues, things could go south quite fast. Cora is trying to stir the troops in the locker room and, if Story's comments are any indication, he may have succeeded. Now, we'll see if the results on the diamond follow.