Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- The Boston Red Sox have consistently underperformed their run differential by the largest margin in baseball this season.
- Multiple key players have taken turns underperforming while injuries have sidelined top prospects and rotation pieces.
- With the team firmly out of contention, the front office now faces pressure to move established veterans before the trade deadline.
The universe has had it up to here with the 2026 Boston Red Sox.
As the entire greater Boston era furiously refreshed their feeds waiting for news of a Giannis Antetokounmpo trade, the Red Sox and their persistent, unending patheticness attempted to sneak out the back exit. After rookie Jake Bennett pitched a six-inning gem, Boston's bullpen allowed eight consecutive hits to close the game, the last of which was this:
Jake McCarthy clears the bases with a WALK-OFF TRIPLE 😱 pic.twitter.com/Q3CN7AwmN7
— MLB (@MLB) June 23, 2026
If a Jake Bennett masterpiece followed by Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman going single, single, single, single, single, single, single, walk-off-triple isn’t a perfect microcosm of the Red Sox season, then nothing is. Decent performances are ruined by flashes of impossible stupidity. Boston has been its own worst enemy all season, and now it’s time to finally, mercifully, wave the white flag and trade everyone.
This Red Sox season has passed the point of no return
When ripping takes in a baseball context, you have to make sure to statistically substantiate them, lest you invoke the wrath of the analytics gods. So when I say the Red Sox are their own worst enemy, I’m not talking about that being the vibe. I’m not Bob Ryan in 1983, saying that Wade Boggs had “no evidence to suggest he is a man you want to send up there in the late innings with men in scoring position” when Boggs was in fact hitting .363 with RISP and .615 with the bases loaded. The fact that the 2026 Red Sox are their own worst enemy is a statistically ironclad fact.
If we take a gander at Pythagorean Win Totals (basically a team’s true total of wins and losses if their run differential and expected statistics actually translated to their record), we find that the Red Sox are the most underperforming team in baseball, six entire wins below what their underlying run expectancy suggests. This could be due to one of two reasons: bad luck, if you think that relievers giving up eight straight hits is just a random occurrence, or rank-amateur incompetence. Judging by Duran’s fumbling around in left field to create a walk-off triple, I am going to postulate that at least some of it comes down to incompetence.
The roster has been taking turns underperforming, with Caleb Durbin — who was unequivocally the worst hitter in baseball the last time I wrote about this team — now easily their best offensive player for the past month. Duran has completely lost the ability to hit, and no bat speed or barrel rate in the world salvages an inability to walk or make contact. Everything else on the roster is just a gimmick: the DH platoon is an embarrassment, the starting pitching rotation outside of Ranger Suarez has been a joke, and the two most exciting players on the roster, Garrett Crochet and Roman Anthony, have missed basically the entire season with injuries.
The Red Sox should trade major players at the deadline
Here is a list of players the Red Sox should and probably will at least try to trade: Willson Contreras, Sonny Gray, Duran and Chapman. Here is a list of players they should not trade, at least not yet: Anthony, Crochet, Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu, Payton Tolle and Marcelo Mayer. Everyone else, I really do not care.
The most absurd part of this Red Sox season is that many of the things chief baseball officer Craig Breslow was made fun of for have kind of worked. Run prevention? They are third in the Majors Defensive Runs Saved, and Rafaela and Abreu are arguably the two best defensive outfielders in baseball. Rafael Devers? He’s been terrible in San Francisco; Durbin has twice his WAR, despite not hitting for much of the last three months. Ranger Suarez instead of Alex Bregman? Looking like money in the bank, as Bregman has been awful for the Cubs. But this team still cannot create runs; they are bottom five in OPS and second to last in home runs.
And worst of all, it’s just no fun to watch random assortments of players you may or may not have heard of all rotate around while the guys Red Sox fans were supposed to be excited about bob up and down on the IL. I want to have fun watching my baseball team, and this is the opposite of fun. Because while lot of stats suggest the Red Sox are bad, but they don’t suggest they’re the worst team in baseball. That is a distinction they have fought tooth and nail to achieve.
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