Alex Cora doesn’t sugarcoat message to Red Sox during brutal slump

The Boston Red Sox left Atlanta on Wednesday night after being swept by the Braves and having lost four of their last five after a 2-1 series loss to the Twins over the weekend. Sure, the club is still in third place in the AL East, but it still feels as if they left far too much meat on the bone both in Minnesota and in Atlanta on the now-ended road trip. And that's something that needs to change, which manager Alex Cora agrees with.

Coming out of the series loss to the Twins wherein the Red Sox won the finale on Sunday with an offensive barrage, Cora seemed optimistic that the club's slumping offense wouldn't follow then to the southeast. But it did and, after back-to-back defeats at the hands of the Braves by a combined score of 9-2, the manager clearly couldn't hold back his frustrations.

After Wednesday's loss in a rematch against longtime Red Sox Chris Sale, Cora didn't talk about his optimistic outlook but, instead, seemed to lay down an ultimatum for his team to simply up their performance, per Tim Crowley of NESN.

"I think we went 0-for-whatever with runners in scoring position," Cora said. "We’ve seen that before. We need to be better. We have to. We didn’t hit throughout the road trip. You look into our offense and we fall into this trap where it’s really, really good because we score runs, but look at the shutouts. The percentage of games where we haven’t scored more than two runs. We gotta be better."

Alex Cora's blunt message to struggling Red Sox: 'We gotta be better'

And indeed, the Red Sox do have to be better. The current skid of losing four out of five has been marred by a distinct lack of offense. Boston scored nine runs in the Sunday, May 5 win over the Twins. Outside of that, however, the club scored a combined five runs over the other four games. That's not going to cut it, especially against good teams.

It's not hard to find where the offensive struggles lie, or are at least most glaring, either. The Red Sox in the series against the Braves alone -- which, again, was only two games in Atlanta -- went a dismal 1-for-20 with runners in scoring position. They are getting on base and giving the team opportunities, but the club isn't delivering. That's perhaps most notable for guys like Rafael Devers or Tyler O'Neill, two of the team's best offensive players who are hitting around or below the Mendoza line with runners in scoring position.

Despite this, if returning to Fenway Park this weekend for a three-game set against the Washington Nationals sparks an offensive resurgence for the Red Sox, they are still in a good spot. Their pitching staff has been one of baseball's best and they are still 19-18 on the year. While that's 5.5 games back in the division, it's only 2.5 games back of an AL Wild Card spot early in the year.

Cora didn't mince words and he's absolutely right. The Red Sox need to be better, especially offensively. And if that comes, this season is still very much alive for Boston.