The Boston Red Sox Tuesday, August 6, 2019

* The Boston Globe

Xander Bogaerts asserts his leadership to spark the Red Sox

Nicole Yang

Third-base coach Carlos Febles held both arms in the air, overtly signaling for his runner to stop, but shortstop Xander Bogaerts blazed past the prudent instruction with hopes of reaching home.

Soon it became clear Bogaerts himself wasn’t too confident in his choice, as he craned his head to check on the status of the ball. Sure enough, it was on its way to catcher Meibrys Viloria, who would tag Bogaerts out at home and end the bottom of the first inning.

With the Red Sox riding an eight-game losing streak into Monday night’s game against the bottom- dwelling Kansas City Royals, the sense of urgency was high. Manager Alex Cora said before first pitch that if the team can win each of its remaining 16 series, then the defending World Series champions would be in “a good spot.”

“We have to do it,” Cora said. “We can’t talk about it the whole time, like, ‘We’ll be fine, we’ll be fine, we’ll be fine, we’ll be fine.’ No, no. Right now, we’re not fine and we know it.”

So, Bogaerts wanted that run.

He didn’t get it.

Given his performances this season, Bogaerts is hardly deserving of any criticism — even in spite of his base-running blunder. But he quickly remedied the situation, and his risky decision proved to be inconsequential.

At his next at-bat, in the third inning, Bogaerts drove in Boston’s first run of the game for an early 1-0 lead. With runners on first and third and no outs, shortstop Nick Lopez couldn’t field a hard-hit ball, allowing right fielder Mookie Betts to score. The thumper, which had an exit velocity of 105.4 m.p.h., earned Lopez an error and Bogaerts his 85th RBI of the season.

Bogaerts now has 20 RBIs and is batting .346 in the team’s 25 games since the All-Star Break. During that span, he also ranks among the league’s top-5 players in hits, runs, and total bases. His totals only continued to grow on Monday, as he crossed the plate in the seventh, after reaching base on a four-pitch walk, thanks to Andrew Benintendi’s second double of the day.

The production, however, isn’t the only way Bogaerts has been contributing. Despite going hitless in Boston’s four losses against the New York Yankees — an 0-for-15 skid that he snapped in the first inning on Monday — Cora identified the 26-year-old as one of the players that has stepped up as a leader during the team’s recent stretch of struggles. Cora specifically highlighted his approach to the situation as well as his support for the group.

“He’s been very honest, very genuine about it,” Cora said. “We made a huge commitment to this guy. He’s playing the part, not only on the field but becoming a leader of the team.”

After signing a six-year, $120 million contract extension in April, Bogaerts appears to be living up to his billing. Center fielder Jackie Bradley Jr., who also began his major league career in 2013, noted his teammate has been more vocal in the clubhouse.

“He’s talked a little bit more than he normally does,” Bradley said. “I think he’s been able to speak his opinion a little bit more than he normally would.

“As we all get older, we get a little bit more mature. He’s a year older. He’s a year more experienced. With that comes growth.”

Rick Porcello’s roll through Royals was sorely needed

Nick Kelly

There was no need to panic when Cheslor Cuthbert turned Rick Porcello’s slider into a home run.

Sure, it wasn’t something Porcello wanted to give up, but he could afford it as well as he was pitching.

The solo shot in the top of the sixth inning was the only run Porcello gave up. Nothing more than a blemish in an otherwise crisp start.

On Monday, Porcello put together his best performance since shutting out Minnesota for seven innings on June 17. He gave up four hits, the one earned run, walked two, and struck out five over six innings as the Red Sox snapped an eight-game losing streak, defeating the Kansas City Royals, 7-5, in the series opener at Fenway Park.

“Today, you saw the rhythm and the conviction behind the pitches,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “He was able to repeat his windup and he did what he did. A good mix of pitches. The curveball, the changeup, the fastball played today. He gave us six innings, and that was what we were looking for.”

Porcello mixed his 99 pitches well, 31 of which were four-seam fastballs and 24 two-seamers.

His first of five strikeouts, however, came on his slider. It was the same pitch he threw to Cuthbert, about 84 miles per hour, when Cuthbert homered. But in this at-bat, Porcello got Cuthbert to bite as he struck out swinging.

“On an eight-game skid, we needed to stop the bleeding and turn it around,” Porcello said. “Nice to be able to go out there, have a positive start, and contribute to a win.”

Cuthbert remained at the center of just about every crucial moment in Porcello’s start Monday. There was the first strikeout of the game and the home run in the sixth, but Porcello pointed to another Cuthbert moment as the turning point.

The Red Sox took a 3-0 lead in the third, thanks in part to a two-run homer from Sam Travis. Porcello took the mound in the next inning, knowing how crucial the first out would be to build on the offensive momentum.

But he fell behind Cuthbert, 3-1. Then, Porcello executed a fastball down and away that turned into a fly out to Jackie Bradley Jr.

“That was, in my mind, probably the biggest at-bat of the game,” Porcello said. “He gets on base, and you allow them to start to do some things. More just kind of the momentum. We get up three runs and you want to put a zero up there, and have a shutdown inning.”

There were plenty of zeros put up while Porcello stood on the mound — something that he, the rotation and the Red Sox badly needed. Never mind that the outing came against the Royals, third from the bottom of the American League.

Porcello came into the game having allowed at least three earned runs in each of his seven starts since the Twins shutout. In four of those seven outings, he gave up six earned runs.

The starting rotation has not been much better as a whole. In the eight games coming into Monday, it had given up 61 hits and 44 earned runs over 37 innings.

Even if it’s against the Royals, the Red Sox are more than happy to have a four-hit, one-earned-run outing from their starting pitcher. The effort from Porcello prevented the Sox from stringing together nine consecutive losses, something they have not done since 2010.

“It’s a huge boost,” third baseman Rafael Devers said through a translator. “The first game of the homestand, it’s always good to have that first win. We know we have a bunch of pitchers that are capable of doing it, so it was good that Rick got us off on the right foot.”

The Sox are well aware that they are not out of the rut yet, though. It’s one game, and they still sit outside of a wild card spot.

But they will take a win over a loss any day. Especially when victories have been so difficult to find.

“We have to do better,” Cora said. “That’s the bottom line. For us to do this, it starts with pitching.

“ Today was the first step.”

Bad back forces J.D. Martinez out of Monday’s lineup

Matt Porter

As the Red Sox tried to get off the mat Monday, J.D. Martinez was a strong candidate to do some heavy lifting.

If only his back would allow it.

The club scratched Martinez, on the longest hitting streak among Boston regulars (four games), from Monday’s lineup against the Kansas City Royals because of a back ailment. Martinez has dealt with minor back discomfort this season.

It was “acting up,” manager Alex Cora said before the Red Sox snapped an eight-game skid with a 7-5 victory. “A little bit tight.”

Cora said the flare-up occurred, and was treated, Monday morning. Martinez was not hampered during the New York series. He was not expected to be available until Tuesday, at the earliest.

“It is what it is,” Cora said. “We’re not going to push him out there. We’ve got to make sure he’s healthy.”

During the team’s eight-game slide, Martinez hit .417 (5 for 12), with a homer, two RBIs, and five walks over his last four games. He had homered in four of his last 10 games, and three of his last six at Fenway.

Christian Vazquez filled in at designated hitter, going 0 for 4. Sandy Leon caught and hit ninth, with left fielder Andrew Benintendi moving into Martinez’s cleanup spot, where he went 2 for 4 with a pair of doubles and two RBIs.

Another Red Sox star, Mookie Betts, was taken out of the game after the seventh inning with a left shin contusion, after fouling a pitch off his leg. The club said he is day-to-day.

“Precautionary,” Cora explained after the game. “He should be OK for [Tuesday].”

Moreland a bit off

Entering Monday, Mitch Moreland was 4 for 21 in seven games since coming off the injured list, with one extra-base hit. Moreland, originally placed on the IL with a quad strain July 8, has been trying to find his timing.

“It’s been OK,” he said. “It’s something we talked about having to manage for a little bit anyways, and we’ve had a pretty good string of lefthanders. Haven’t had a whole lot of starts and getting in there. But that’s the way the game goes. You keep trying to prepare, and be ready when your number’s called.”

Moreland, who said he didn’t swing for a month while on the IL, hasn’t been able to drive the ball opposite-field since his return.

“Mechanically, he’s a little bit off,” said Cora, who studied Moreland’s batting-cage session before Sunday’s game. “It’s all about balance with him. It seems like he’s pulling off.”

Moreland said he would like to fix his swing now. As for the deficit in the standings, he said, the club isn’t trying to erase it in one day.

“I think we’re a good enough group,” he said. “We’ve got enough guys who have some experience now to know, we’ve got two months left, and it’s going to take every bit of it.

“If anybody can do it, I think this group has it. If I was going to do it, this is the group I want to do it with . . . Nobody’s letting up. Everybody’s trying to find the answer to get it going and right the ship.

“We’ve still got a long ways to go. Two months, there’s a lot of stuff that can happen. In my time playing the game, I’ve been on both sides of it, where we’ve been ahead and lost the lead, and been behind and gained it.”

Cora: ‘We’ll be fine’

As expected, Cora wasn’t throwing in the towel after a pair of sweeps at the hands of the Yankees and Rays.

“It doesn’t look great as far as math and percentages, but I do believe that we have talent,” he said. “It’s just about putting a string of good pitching together. We did it for seven days, eight days, whatever it was, and you saw what happened.”

Entering Monday, Fangraphs put the Red Sox’ playoff chances at 15.9 percent, down from 44.8 percent entering the season. FiveThirtyEight had them at nine percent. Baseball-Reference was even lower, at 3.7 percent.

“We’re five days from turning this around, you know?” Cora said. “The guys pitch well five days in a row, I think the narrative changes.

“We can’t talk about it the whole time, like, ‘We’ll be fine, we’ll be fine.’ We’re not fine, and we know it.”

Cashner struggling

Righthander Andrew Cashner, who takes the mound Tuesday, has struggled since his arrival in Boston (6.94 ERA in four starts). He hasn’t pitched into the seventh inning, and walked a season-high five in last Thursday’s loss to the Rays.

When asked if Cashner’s spot in the rotation was secure, Cora smiled and said, “Oh yeah.” In the manager’s view, the former Oriole’s location, particularly that of his changeup, needs to improve.

“His command was outstanding for a long period of time,” Cora said. “The last one, he was off.”

There are plenty of reasons for the Red Sox’ 2019 flop

Chad Finn

It’s not just that it’s easy to pinpoint where it has gone wrong for the 2019 Red Sox, who now have 55 losses — one more than they had in their star-dusted 2018 season — with 48 games left to play.

It’s that there are multiple options for the answer, and all of them are correct.

Was it when they treated their starting pitchers too delicately in spring training, to the point that they weren’t prepared for the regular season?

Was it the 6-13 start to the regular season, which put them 8½ games behind the then- first-place Rays just 19 games in?

Was it the half-dozen fits and starts through the first two-thirds of the schedule, when every time it looked like they might be finding themselves, something would go wrong? Right up through losing the fourth game of a potential sweep of the Yankees a week ago, one more almost-but-not-quite moment?

Or was it the harsh realization over the weekend — as the Yankees pulled off a four-game sweep of the Sox and left them reeling on an eight-game losing streak — that the Red Sox apparently spent two years’ worth of good fortune last year?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

All of the above, and then some.

In a broader sense, it’s also easy to pinpoint what went wrong. The offense (an MLB-leading 652 runs) is excellent, though mixing in a couple more walkoffs here and there would pick up the pitching staff, which apparently is incapable of picking up itself. Brandon Workman deserves a Fireman of the Year award just for putting out his bullpen cohorts’ attempts at arson.

And as for the starting rotation, let’s put it this way: I recently compared Rick Porcello (5.74 ERA) to 2003 John Burkett. Right now, John Burkett might be the Red Sox’ best hope in a wild-card game, on the slim chance they can make up their 6½-game deficit the next seven weeks. And he’s now 54 years old.

But as disappointing as the actual season has been, I don’t think we can overlook how many missteps the president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski made in the offseason. It shouldn’t have been a difficult offseason — the core of the 119-win champs was intact and in its prime for the most part — and yet the Red Sox front office got almost nothing right.

Let’s take a quick stroll through the transactions log:

Nov. 16: Re-signed 1B/DH Steve Pearce to a one-year, $6.25 million deal. Pearce’s love for the Patriots is well-known, so he’d probably understand when we say this was the kind of move Bill Belichick never would make. It wasn’t for a lot of money in general, but it was probably a $4 million overpay for a player of Pearce’s profile — a mid-30s journeyman 1B/DH type.

It was a sentimental signing after his World Series MVP performance, and given the Red Sox budget constraints, it got in the way of signing an actual proven relief pitcher or two to make up for the departures of Craig Kimbrel and Joe Kelly.

And to reiterate, I’m fine with letting them go. Paying for Kimbrel’s decline would have been a bad idea. But trying to replace their combined 136 appearances by purchasing Quad A lottery tickets with decent spin rates on their breaking balls was foolish. I said it then, and I’ll say it when he’s getting big outs for the Yankees in October: They should have signed Adam Ottavino.

Nov. 20: Traded second baseman Esteban Quiroz to Padres for Colten Brewer. Obviously a minor deal, but one that in retrospect signaled their offseason approach to bullpen construction: Let’s try to find another Ryan Brasier or two rather than paying for established relievers. Brewer has a 4.31 ERA and 1.75 WHIP in 48 appearances.

Dec. 6: Re-signed P Nathan Eovaldi to a four-year, $68 million deal. Well, at least they didn’t give this deal to Porcello instead. I suppose there was some sentimentality to this contract as well, given his legendary performance in Game 3 of the World Series, and it certainly came with a lot of risk given his injury history, but I also understand it. It’s not an insane commitment in money or length, and he’s a talented pitcher and great teammate who is still just 29 years old.

Dec. 18-20: Signed free agent pitchers Erasmo Ramirez, Carson Smith, and Ryan Weber. Did I mention that they also signed Jennry Mejia, Daniel Schlereth, Brian Ellington, and Dan Runzler over the winter, with Mejia coming off a “lifetime” ban for three failed performance-enhancing drug tests, and the latter all journeymen who have since been released? The let’s-sign-a-bunch-of-guys-and-see-what-sticks approach left nothing that stuck, unless you want to count Weber and his 4.50 ERA in nine appearances. I’m not counting it.

March 22: Re-signed P Chris Sale to a five-year, $145 million contract extension beginning in 2020. I have no idea what to make of Sale’s enigmatic trainwreck of a season (5-11, 4.68 ERA, a different command issue every time he pitches, and yet a league-leading 13.1 K/9 rate). But I know this: The urgency to extend him at the end of spring training when he was coming off a season abbreviated to some degree by injury seemed to be an indication that the Red Sox were sure he would be his usual self. He has not been, all year, and were he hitting the open market after the season, I can’t imagine he’d get anything resembling $145 million over the next five years. (By the way, his most similar pitcher through age 29 is David Price. This seems fitting somehow.)

If you want to count the A++ decision to re-sign Xander Bogaerts — who seems to be the team conscience as well as their best player this season — for six years and $120 million in the first week of the regular season as an offseason move, go ahead. But I’m giving all the credit to him for wanting to stay, and doing so at a rate that probably was less than he’d get as a free agent.

If he hasn’t been the best thing about this season, it’s only because Rafael Devers emerged rapidly as a line-drive hitting force. But that’s about it.

The 2019 Red Sox are a mess. We never could have expected the decisions of the offseason to foreshadow this, but they sure have played a part in making this season an increasingly unwatchable sequel to a championship.

Is it over for the Red Sox? Here’s what history says

Alex Speier

Is it over?

The Red Sox are plumbing unfathomable depths, their eight-game losing streak having left them with a 6½- game deficit in the wild card suggesting a team that isn’t far from being able to start making October vacation plans. Indeed, it’s worth asking whether such a point has already arrived.

After all, the Red Sox are much closer to teams deemed noncontenders, the Rangers (the Sox are a half- game ahead) and Angels (3½ games), than the Rays (5½ games) and A’s (five games). The eight-game plummet that ended with Monday’s win over the Royals is precisely the sort of downturn that the Red Sox couldn’t afford off their dismal start.

Do playoff teams endure stretches like this? Usually, no, but it does happen. In fact, since 2010, there have been seven playoff teams that had losing streaks of at least eight games. Most recently, the 2017 Dodgers overcame an 11-game losing streak to reach the playoffs — albeit at a time when they had all but clinched the NL West and still could cruise to a triple-digit victory total. That same year, the Rockies overcame an eight-game losing streak to win the NL wild card at 87-75.

Those 2017 Rockies were aided by the lack of elite teams in the National League. It’s doubtful that both the Rays and A’s — each on pace for 93 wins — will permit the Sox to reach the postseason with 87 wins.

That reality underscores the significant gap that the Red Sox face. A 6½-game deficit with 48 contests left means that it’s startlingly late. If, for instance, Tampa Bay and Oakland merely maintain their current paces, the Red Sox would have to go 34-14 (.708) to reach 93 wins.

Again, that’s difficult, but not entirely unprecedented. Indeed, the Red Sox and Rays have a measure of first-hand familiarity that such a sizable gap in August can be closed.

On Aug. 7, 2011, the Rays lost to the A’s, 5-4, to drop to 59-54. They were 10 games behind the Yankees in the wild card and 11 behind the Red Sox in the AL East. As late as Aug. 27, the Red Sox still led the division and had a nine-game advantage on the Rays. But Tampa Bay, with an elite pitching staff, caught a wave, while the Red Sox dropped like a stone, resulting in one of the most shocking collapses in baseball history on the final day of the season.

That same year, the Cardinals were 67-63, 10½ games out of the NL wild card after the games of Aug. 24. But the fates of St. Louis and Atlanta that year nearly mirrored those of the Sox and Rays, with the hard- charging Cardinals sneaking past the Braves on the final day of the season, then continuing their push through October and eventually emerging as champions.

The 1995 Mariners erased a 13-game deficit to the Angels in early August to win the AL West. The 2006 Twins were 10½ games out of first after 111 games, but came back to win the AL Central over the Tigers. The 2012 A’s were 6½ games back in the AL West after 114 games and six back as late as 126 games into the season before racing past the Rangers for the division title.

So precedent suggests that it’s not impossible for the Red Sox to overcome their awful recent play. But to do so, they have to perform in a fashion completely unlike the way they’ve been performing not only during their recent freefall, but for much of the year.

After all, the 2⅔ -inning wipeout of David Price by the Yankees on Sunday night represented the continuation of a pattern, not a departure. The team’s 16 starts of three innings or fewer are the most in the big leagues by a club that doesn’t use an opener. On a team built around the notion that its starting staff can provide six-plus solid innings every night, Eduardo Rodriguez leads the team by averaging just a tick below that standard, Chris Sale is closer to 5⅔ innings per outing, Rick Porcello is at roughly 5½, and Price is at almost exactly five.

That’s a lot of extra innings for the bullpen to pick up — and a lot of starts that have represented complete derailments, pulling the team back toward .500 and the fringes of contention.

According to Fangraphs, the Red Sox still have a 15.9 percent chance of making the playoffs — just under a one-in-six shot. But given their season-long inability to get out of their own way, those probabilities feel unrepresentative of a team that in just eight days went from an inside track on a postseason berth to one that is clinging to the last vestiges of hope.

* The Boston Herald

Rafael Devers connects on another opposite-field home run

Jason Mastrodonato

The Rafael Devers school of opposite-field hitting was in session during the Red Sox’ 7-5 win over the Royals on Monday night.

Another outer-edge breaking ball, another home run over the Green Monster for the sensational 22-year-old third baseman.

Devers now has 23 homers on the year and has made a habit of flicking breaking balls off the end of his bat and over the Monster this year. Ten of his 23 homers are to opposite field.

Royals lefty Mike Montgomery looked mystified when the NESN cameras caught his reaction to Devers’ homer in the fifth inning.

The exit velocity was just 98 mph and the ball landed in the first row of the Monster seats.

“Obviously we had a rough week but we still believe in ourselves,” Devers said. “We know what we’re capable of so it was good to get on the right foot and get a win because we know we have the talent to get it.”

Mookie Betts took a stinger off the shin in the seventh inning and had to be replaced in the eighth inning. He fouled a breaking ball from a lefty into the lower part of his left leg and was officially diagnosed with just a bruise. After the game, he said he felt perfectly normal and expects to play on Tuesday.

Red Sox roll over lowly Royals to snap eight-game skid

Jason Mastrodonato

With a weak team like the Kansas City Royals to beat up on, the Red Sox look formidable again.

The losing streak is over. The Sox snapped their eight-game skid with a 7-5 win Monday night over the Royals, who are now 34 games below .500 at 40-74.

“We need it,” Rick Porcello said. “Eight-game skid and we needed to stop the bleeding and turn it around.”

And this continues to be the calling card of the 2019 Red Sox, who are 60-55: Knock around the bad teams, with a 37-19 (.661) record against teams under .500, but get steamrolled by the good teams, with a 23-36 (.390) record against anyone with a record of .500 or better.

At least the eight-game losing streak is over. The Rays and Yankees halted all momentum by Red Sox starters and exposed their paper mache bullpen in embarrassing fashion last week. The offense scored just 12 runs in a four-game set at the hitter-friendly Yankee Stadium in the middle of the hot summer.

Add it all up and it was a stretch so bad it might have cost the Sox a shot at the postseason.

Porcello allowed nine runs in 11⅔ innings in his starts against the division rivals last week. But Monday, against the Royals, on a night that Fenway Park had the atmosphere of a preseason game, Porcello was a stud again.

Using the same pitch mix at the same speeds he’s been using all year, Porcello could do no wrong against the Royals, who entered the game with MLB’s 26th-ranked offense. He lasted six innings and allowed just one run on a long ball by Cheslor Cuthbert, who has seven homers in 55 games.

A minor adjustment to Porcello’s mechanics that happened in his previous outing carried over in this one, manager Alex Cora said.

“He found his rhythm mechanically,” Cora said. “He took it into the bullpen and did a good job with it and today you saw the rhythm, you saw the conviction behind the pitches. He was able to repeat his windup and he did what he did.”

Porcello said the team needs to relax after the long losing streak.

“That’s kind of where we need to be in general,” he said. “Obviously there’s some pressure, especially when you start losing with the talented team that we have. That’s kind of how we have to carry ourselves every day. We have to be relaxed and understand to focus on the task at hand and go out and execute it and that’s it. And block out whatever pressure and whatever else is going on.”

The effort was good enough for the Red Sox to rebound with four runs against journeyman lefty Mike Montgonmery, whom the Royals just acquired from the Cubs for backup catcher Martin Maldonado.

Sam Travis took him deep for a two-run shot in a three-run third, then Rafael Devers had a home run that could only happen in Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, lifting an outside curveball opposite-field for a blooper, his 23rd long ball of the season.

The Red Sox bullpen made a mess of it, with Nathan Eovaldi giving up a solo shot to Meibrys Viloria and Matt Barnes allowing a three-run jack to Bubba Starling. And once again they had to turn to closer Brandon Workman in a game that once was well in hand.

Workman allowed the tying run to the plate in Hunter Dozier but struck him out to end the game.

J.D. Martinez didn’t play in this one, as he continues to deal with back trouble.

Mookie Betts was removed with a left shin contusion and the Red Sox said he is day to day. Betts fouled one hard off his shin in the seventh inning.

The Rays lost, leaving the Sox 5½ games back of Tampa and Oakland for the second wild card spot.

“There’s no pressure on them,” Cora said of his team.

Getting Porcello going in the right direction is a small step in the long climb back into postseason consideration.

“I’m really happy for the outing that he had,” Devers said. “We know what he’s capable of. He’s a Cy Young Award winner. It’s good to see Rick get in a good rhythm and be able to pitch as good as he did today.”

Alex Cora on sinking Red Sox: ‘Right now, we’re not fine’

Jason Mastrodonato

The Red Sox are sinking and Alex Cora knows it.

His players do too, the manager said Monday before the Sox looked to snap an eight-game losing streak with their series opener against the lowly Kansas City Royals at Fenway.

“We’re five days from turning this around,” Cora said. “The guys pitch well five days in a row, I think the narrative changes. We have to do it. We can’t talk about it the whole time, like ‘We’ll be fine, we’ll be fine, we’ll be fine.’ No. Right now, we’re not fine. And we know it.”

The Sox were eight games back of the Yankees heading into their Sunday night game at Fenway eight days ago. They’ve since lost eight in a row and have fallen to 14 1/2 games back in the division. They’re 6 1/2 games back of the wild card. They’re allowing more than seven runs per game in the losing streak while they’ve scored four runs per game.

“Good teams go through stuff like this,” Cora said. “It just happens that here, it hasn’t happened in a while. Bad teams win 10 games in a row, 12 games in a row. That’s how it is in baseball. I’m not saying we’re great or we’re bad but we haven’t had our great stretch either.”

A year after winning 108 games and cruising to a World Series title, the Sox now have just a 4 percent chance to make the playoffs, according to Baseball Reference. FanGraphs lists those odds a little higher, at 15 percent.

“Doesn’t look great as far as math and percentages and all that,” Cora said. “But I do believe we have talent and it’s just about putting a string of good pitching together. We did it for seven days, eight days, whatever it was. You saw what happened.”

The managers and players appear to be exhausting themselves, among others, with their insistence that “we’re talented” and “we know we’re better than this.”

“The effort is there,” Cora said. “They know that we can do this. I think, I mean, it’s not a great spot, obviously. But they’re in good spirits.”

It seems the Red Sox have taken a step back since the front office did nothing at the trade deadline and sent a message it wasn’t worth investing in this team. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said last week the Sox were too far out of the division race to convince him to make a big trade.

Is that a fair reason for players to feel less inspired?

“I think clubhouses react differently in certain situations,” Cora said. “If we’re going to go with that, New York didn’t pull a trade and they played well. I think it’s just a matter of ‘show up and play.’

“We traded for somebody earlier, we got Andrew Cashner and we knew we needed that fifth starter. If it’s going to go by, you don’t trade, you don’t play well, we just came from a place where they didn’t trade for somebody and they played good baseball.”

Bogaerts stands up

There’s one player who has picked up his teammates consistently all year: Xander Bogaerts.

But he went 0-for-15 in four games in New York and the Red Sox scored just 12 total runs in those games.

“You see the overall picture,” Cora said. “You see .310 and 85 RBI and 25 home runs. It’s going to happen. Everybody goes through this. It just happened that it was a tough week for us and it gets magnified. But he’s in a good place.”

Bogaerts has been carrying the team on his back all season, on and off the field. He’s consistently available in front of his locker to speak to reporters after tough losses, when many players head out without facing questions.

Asked if there were any leaders stepping up in this dire time, Cora pointed to him.

“I mean, you see Xander the way he’s approaching the whole situation, the way he’s playing and talking to players, just standing there for them,” Cora said. “He’s being honest and very genuine about it. We made a huge commitment to this guy and he’s playing the part, not only on the field but becoming a leader of the team.”

Martinez hurting again

J.D. Martinez was scratched from Monday’s game with back issues again.

“He felt it this morning,” Cora said. “He got here early, got treatment, it wasn’t great so we’ll stay away from him.”

Martinez, who turns 32 on Aug. 21, has played in 103 of the Sox’ 114 games this year.

“Not going to push him out there,” Cora said. “Got to make sure he’s healthy.”

Mitch Moreland is 4-for-21 (.190) with eight strikeouts since returning from the injured list.

“Mechanically he’s a little off,” Cora said. “All about balance with him. Seems like he’s pulling off. When Mitch is going good, lefties start hitting the ball the other way. He hasn’t been able to do that since he came back. Yesterday he worked on a few things balance-wise and hopefully the next time he starts he can start hitting the ball the other way.”

* The Providence Journal

Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts (left shin contusion) leaves Monday’s game

Bill Koch

Mookie Betts was removed from Monday night’s Red Sox game due to a left shin contusion.

Boston’s right fielder is officially listed as day-to-day but is expected to return to the lineup Tuesday for the second of this three-game series with the Royals.

Betts exited in the top of the eighth inning with the Red Sox holding a five-run lead over Kansas City at Fenway Park. He scored from second base on an Andrew Benintendi double to right field and was replaced in the field by Brock Holt. Betts fouled off three pitches before walking in the seventh, and one of them caught the reigning American League Most Valuable Player just above his laces.

“Precautionary,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “He fouled one off and you saw him running the bases – it didn’t look good. I just saw him down there and he should be okay for tomorrow.”

Cora and Boston’s medical staff checked on Betts at first base, but he remained in the game. He scored from second on Benintendi’s key swing, one that drove home the eventual winning run in a 7-5 Red Sox victory. Boston snapped its eight-game losing streak in the process.

Holt came into the game at second base, forcing Cora to shuffle his lineup. Michael Chavis moved from second to first base, Sam Travis moved from first to left field and the remaining Red Sox outfielders each shifted to the right. Andrew Benintendi went to center field and Jackie Bradley Jr. took over for Betts in right field.

Red Sox 7, Royals 5: Boston losing streak stopped at eight games

Bill Koch

Rick Porcello traced his success Monday night to the first batter he faced in the top of the fourth inning.

Cheslor Cuthbert was at the plate for the Royals at Fenway Park. The Red Sox tallied three runs in the bottom of the third to take an early lead, and Porcello was tasked with providing a shutdown inning. Any sort of threat from Kansas City, especially with Boston riding an eight-game losing streak, would have caused a ripple of anxiety to course through the 33,636 fans on hand

Cuthbert had worked the count to 3-and-1 when Porcello fired a two-seam fastball that started off the plate away to the right-handed hitter. The pitch’s natural tail ran it back toward the outside edge of the strike zone, and Cuthbert put it on a line to center field. Jackie Bradley Jr. was there to make a routine catch, setting up a 1-2-3 inning for Porcello on just eight pitches.

It’s the little moments like those that remind us managers and players in the big leagues are watching a different game. We’d likely focus on a two-run homer by Sam Travis or a two-run double by Andrew Benintendi or a three-run homer by Bubba Starling. Porcello opted for the first out of the fourth in a 7-5 victory that snapped the Red Sox out of their skid.

“I fell behind 3-and-1 to Cuthbert and was able to execute a fastball down and away and get a fly ball out,” Porcello said. “That was, in my mind, probably the biggest at-bat of the game. If he gets on base it would allow them to start to do some things.

“We get up three runs and we want to put a zero up there and get a shutdown inning. We were able to do it pretty quickly, so it was nice.”

Porcello also worked around a two-out single in the top of the fifth, setting up a solo home run by Rafael Devers in the bottom half. Boston enjoyed a 4-0 lead and was finally able to breathe after eight days of suffocation courtesy of the Rays and Yankees.

“It’s a huge boost, especially that first game of a home stand,” Devers said through translator Bryan Almonte. “It’s always good to have that first win. We know we have a bunch of pitchers who are capable of doing that.”

Porcello turned in just his third quality start in his last eight outings, a difficult stretch dating to June 23. Any sort of capable pitching performance was welcome after the Red Sox rotation was pounded to the tune of a 10.70 earned-run average over its last eight games. Boston is now 31-11 when its starters complete at least six innings allowing three runs or less, including 14 victories in its last 15 such games.

“That’s what we need,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “They know it. I believe in these guys and we believe in the group. They’ve done it before.”

The beginnings of this bounce back outing by Porcello came in his last start, one in which he suffered an 8- 5 defeat against Tampa Bay last Wednesday. Porcello was down 5-0 after just two innings, as Austin Meadows crushed a three-run homer in the top of the second. You couldn’t be blamed if you reached for the remote control right about then.

But Porcello kept working, navigating scoreless through the next 3 2/3 innings. The solo home run he allowed to Willy Adames prior to being removed in the sixth made for a sour finish, but that stretch gave Porcello something to take with him into his next four days. The trick was to build on it through his normal routine, which included a bullpen session at Yankee Stadium over the weekend.

“I felt pretty good in the second half of that start,” Porcello said. “I’ve been working on it all week – I’ve been working on it all year. Finally got some things that I feel like are sticking and working well.”

The Red Sox closed Monday 5½ games behind the Rays in the American League wild card chase. Tampa Bay, Oakland and Cleveland all lost, allowing Boston to pick up a much-needed game in the standings after a wretched week. This sort of nightly grind is the only way the Red Sox can move within sniffing distance of October, and it’s one Porcello embraced on Monday.

Are the Red Sox struggling because they sat out the trade deadline?

Bill Koch

Are the Red Sox struggles due to their inaction at the trade deadline?

Boston had dropped six straight since failing to make a deal by 4 p.m. on July 31. Right-hander Andrew Cashner was acquired from Baltimore, but the Red Sox made no other moves on the final day. Tampa Bay, Cleveland and Oakland all used the opportunity to beef up their respective rosters.

“I think clubhouses react differently in certain situations,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “If you’re going to go with that, New York didn’t pull a trade and they’re playing well. It’s just a matter of showing up and playing.”

The Yankees had an obvious need for a starting pitcher at the deadline and have suffered through a rash of injuries elsewhere. Brian Cashman was unable to swing a deal while two premium right-handers changed teams – Zack Greinke to Houston and Marcus Stroman to the cross-town Mets. New York might well have already been out of Boston’s reach in the American League East, but the Red Sox had won 15 of their previous 22 and 25 of their previous 38 entering the July 28 series finale with the Yankees.

“We have a very good team in this clubhouse one through 25,” David Price said. “We have a very good team. Some of us haven’t had very good seasons up to this point and there are still (48) games to be played. There’s still time.

Green Monster standings tell the story for Red Sox

Bill Koch

The standings posted on the Green Monster offered Boston a sobering reality upon its return home.

The Red Sox are now closer to Toronto in the American League East than they are to New York. Boston is 14½ games behind the Yankees after a four-game weekend sweep in the Bronx. The Blue Jays sit 14 games adrift of the Red Sox and 28½ games out of first place.

“Like I said yesterday, we know where we’re at,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “It’s not hiding. Whatever in the wild card, whatever in the division – we’ve got to come here and win series. That’s the bottom line.”

Cora and Boston’s players have maintained a consistent public message throughout their eight-game losing streak and fade from playoff contention. The Red Sox entered Monday 6½ games behind Tampa Bay for the second A.L. wild card spot. Boston’s 7-4 setback against the Yankees on Sunday night was its 55th of the season, eclipsing its total from the 2018 regular season.

“Last year is last year,” Xander Bogaerts said. “It was pretty special in its own way. Obviously this year we would love to have the same season or even better. That’s not the way it has been so far.”

Clutch hitting has vanished during Red Sox losing streak

Bill Koch

Heap your misery on the Red Sox starting rotation. They deserve it.

But spare some frustration for bats that have suddenly gone cold during this eight-game losing streak, the longest for Boston since July 2015. The Red Sox returned to Fenway Park on Monday night and looked to save their evaporating playoff chances in a three-game series against the Royals.

Boston is just 11-for-62 with runners in scoring position since a 9-5 win over the Yankees on July 27. The Red Sox had scored 38 times over three nights against New York before hitting the wall, averaging an even 4.0 runs over their next eight games. Boston was 9-4 in its previous 13 contests, averaging 7.46 runs and plating at least nine on six different occasions.

“We didn’t hit with men in scoring position and we didn’t put pressure on the opposition,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “Overall, a horrible week.”

Boston’s frosty performance in the clutch helped fuel its tailspin. The Red Sox started 1-for-9 in a 9-6 loss to the Yankees on July 28. They managed just three hits with a man at second or third that drove in a run against New York over the weekend.

“I know it’s something that a lot of people didn’t expect, to go on a bad run like this,” Xander Bogaerts said. “That’s what happens in this game, man. We just ran into two hot teams and we’ve played them so many times. It seems like they made the adjustment quicker.”

The Rays swept Boston in a three-game series last week, sending the Red Sox to the Bronx without any momentum. Tampa Bay squeezed out a 6-5 victory in the Tuesday opener, as Rafael Devers flew to left field to end the bottom of the eighth inning and Christian Vazquez flew to left field to end the game. Those two at-bats resulted in five men left on base, including a pair just 90 feet from the plate.

“I don’t think they were pressing,” Cora said. “It happens during the season. Raffy and Xander have been hot for three and a half months, so they’re going to run into stretches like this.”

Devers skied a two-run homer to right-center field at Yankee Stadium in the second half of Saturday’s day- night doubleheader. That’s the lone extra-base hit produced by Boston during the slide that has driven home a man in scoring position. The Red Sox have been mostly reduced to singles hitters otherwise, with Andrew Benintendi knocking home five runs through three base hits.

“It’s a bad time to be playing some bad baseball,” Bogaerts said. “It starts with me and I’m looking forward to turning it around, because this season is going by quick.”

Bogaerts, Devers and Mookie Betts are among baseball’s top 16 position players in Wins Above Replacement per FanGraphs. The trio combined to go just 4-for-46 against New York, with Bogaerts shut out in an 0-for-15 performance. Betts singled twice and Devers added a single to his Saturday night homer.

“Everybody goes through this,” Cora said. “It happened that it was in a tough week for us and it gets magnified.”

Boston’s pitching needs all the support its offense can muster. The Red Sox rotation wasn’t all that stingy during the mostly successful 13-game run, working to a 4.88 earned-run average. That number ballooned to a 10.70 ERA during the losing streak, with David Price the latest to be rocked in Sunday’s 7-4 setback.

“I’m sure everybody in here has been through a stretch like this,” Price said. “Maybe not at the professional level, but we’ve all that week or two weeks where it’s a struggle. That’s what it’s been for us so far.”

J.D. Martinez (back) scratched from the Red Sox lineup Monday night

Bill Koch

J.D. Martinez was scratched from the Red Sox lineup prior to Monday’s series opener with the Royals at Fenway Park.

Martinez suffered a recurrence of the back soreness that has nagged at him throughout his time in Boston. He missed all three games of a June home series with the Rays and has been left on the bench 12 times in 2019, matching his total from his debut with the club last year. Andrew Benintendi and Sam Travis slid up one spot apiece in the order to cleanup and fifth, respectively.

“His back is acting up – a little bit tight,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “This morning he felt it. He got treatment.”

Sandy Leon entered the lineup as the catcher batting ninth. Christian Vazquez was switched from catcher to designated hitter and moved up to sixth. Martinez received treatment from director of sports medicine Brad Pearson but wasn’t declared fit to start prior to pregame warm-ups.

“It wasn’t great,” Cora said. “We’ll stay away from him.”

Martinez has hit in six of his last seven games, including all four at Yankee Stadium over the weekend. He’s 9-for-23 in that span with two home runs and eight walks. Martinez reached base in all five plate appearances in the second half of Saturday’s day-night doubleheader against New York, drawing four free passes.

“We’re not going to push him out there,” Cora said. “We’ve got to make sure he’s healthy. We’ll stay away from him and hopefully he’ll be ready for tomorrow.”

* MassLive.com

Rick Porcello, Boston Red Sox put rough stretch behind them at least for one night

Matt Vautour

The start of Rick Porcello’s turnaround was easy to miss. On July 31, a day filled with noise, he finished with three quiet, solid innings in an 8-5 loss to Tampa Bay.

Porcello had given up five runs in the first two frames putting Boston in a hole, it never got out of. A bad start to a bad game in a bad week. On top of that, cameras caught the frustrated pitcher breaking two TV monitors after giving up those runs. Mix that with all the talk about the Red Sox not making a move at the trade deadline before the game and naturally nobody was discussing that Porcello had thrown three scoreless innings in the third, fourth and fifth.

But in those frames, he discovered some consistency in his mechanics that had been missing. He was able to repeat those mechanics Monday with similar results. Before the game Alex Cora publicly challenged his starting pitchers to start the team’s turnaround after and eight-game losing streak and Porcello took step one.

“It’s not the first time I’ve struggled. I feel like I have the mental capacity to bounce back from that kind of stuff," he said. “Today was a good start in the right direction.”

Cora agreed.

“Today you saw the rhythm and the conviction behind the pitches,” Cora said. “He was able to repeat his wind up and he did what he did. His curveball, the change up and the fast ball played today and he was able to give us six innings. ... For us to do this, it starts with pitching. Today was the first step.”

Porcello looked much more like the front-line pitcher he’s been for most of his time in Boston than the struggling right-hander who had allowed over a run an inning for more than a month. He came a batter - or a strike really - from notching six scoreless frames, but Cheslor Cuthbert took him deep with two outs and two strikes in the bottom of the sixth. But he shook it off and induced a weak pop-up to first from Ryan O’Hearn and left with a 4-1 lead en route to his 10th win.

He threw 67 of his 99 pitches for strikes and allowed four hits and two walks while striking out five.

Sandy León recognized that Porcello was himself again early in the start.

“He did a good job today,” he said. “When he’s getting ahead with his fast ball on both corners, he can pitch. He did it today. As a catcher that makes your job easy.”

When the Red Sox took a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the third, Porcello fell behind 3-1 to Cuthbert to start the fourth, but didn’t give in, inducing a fly out.

“In my mind that was the biggest out of the game,” he said. “If he gets on base, you allow them to start to do some things. We get up three runs and you want to put a zero up there and have a shutdown inning.”

After a rough week, Porcello was glad to be in position to pick his team up.

“I needed to stop the bleeding and turn it around,” he said. “It was nice to be able to go out there, have a positive start and contribute to a win.”

Sam Travis sparks Red Sox offense with 2-run HR in Monday’s win

Jason Kates

At first glance, Sam Travis knew the ball was far enough as he hustled out of the batters’ box, but he wondered if it was high enough to clear Fenway’s 37-foot-high wall.

Once the ball became a souvenir, his sprint to first base turned into a trot around the rest of the bases and the Red Sox, who went into Monday’s contest with the Kansas City Royals on an eight-game losing streak, had their first cushion in a while.

The home run came on a 2-1 pitch from Mike Montgomery in the third inning for Travis’ third home run of the season, extending Boston’s lead to 3-0.

“I hit it pretty well,” Travis said. “I didn’t know if it was high enough at the time but it worked out.”

He acknowledged it was a pivotal moment at the time. One batter prior to his long ball, Andrew Benintendi had grounded into a double play for the first two outs of the inning leaving Boston in position to squander a big inning opportunity.

“It was a big point in the game,” he said. "It felt good. Guy on third with two outs, I was just trying to get a pitch I could get the barrel to and make something happen. He left something over, and it worked out for us.”

For a team that was desperately seeking a win, Travis’ long ball set the tone for a Red Sox offense that finished with seven runs on 10 hits.

“The game’s nine innings,” he said. "It was one inning, only 3-0 at the time. It was good for us but we knew we had a lot of game ahead so we had to keep going.”

Now that the team’s winless stretch is over, Travis knows there’s still plenty of work to be done as the team looks to make up ground in the standings.

“We gotta take it one at-bat at a time, one pitch at a time and go out there and pick each other up and have good ABs,” he said. "We gotta come back and get after it tomorrow.”

Mookie Betts injury: Alex Cora calls Red Sox RF’s removal ‘cautionary,’ expects him back Tuesday

Matt Vautour

Red Sox manager Alex Cora said he didn’t think Mookie Betts’ seventh inning injury was serious and expected to have his right fielder in the lineup on Tuesday.

Betts was 0-for-2, with a walk and run scored. After fouling a pitch off his shin in the seventh, he stayed in the game following a visit from the training staff during a Royal pitching change. He came out between the seventh and eighth with what was officially called a shin contusion.

“It was cautionary,” Cora said. “He fouled one off and we saw him run the bases and he didn’t look good. I just saw him. He should be O.K. for tomorrow.”

In his absence, Sam Travis moved to left field from first. Andrew Benintendi slid over to center and Jackie Bradley to right field.

Betts’ departure left the Red Sox without two of their key hitters. Designated hitter J.D. Martinez was a late scratch from the original lineup due to back tightness before the game. He remains day-to-day.

Mookie Betts injury: Boston Red Sox RF leaves Monday’s game with shin contusion

Matt Vautour

Red Sox star right fielder Mookie Betts was removed from Monday’s game against Kansas City with a left shin contusion. He’s officially day-to-day.

Betts was 0-for-2, with a walk and run scored. After fouling a pitch off his shin in the seventh, he stayed in the game following a visit from the training staff during a Royal pitching change. He came out between the seventh and eighth.

In his absence, Sam Travis moved to left field from first. Andrew Benintendi slid over to center and Jackie Bradley to right field.

Betts’ departure left the Red Sox without two of their key hitters. Designated hitter J.D. Martinez was a late scratch from the original lineup due to back tightness before the game.

Alex Cora thinks Boston Red Sox have a run in them but ’It’s not about believing. It’s about doing it’

Matt Vautour

Alex Cora’s knowledge and understanding of the math and analytics in baseball, helped him earn the reputation last year as an ideal modern manager. But with his team facing long odds to get back into the Wild Card race after last week’s disastrous 0-8 run, Cora is steering clear of the simplest numbers.

“We know where we’re at -- whatever in the Wild Card (6.5 games back before Monday’s game), whatever in the division (14.5 games behind the Yankees), we have to come out and win series, that’s the bottom line,” he said. “If we win series from now on, you put yourself in a good spot. It doesn’t look great for us, math and all that. I do believe we have talent. It’s about putting a streak of good pitching together. We did it for seven days (5-2 vs. Tampa and New York, July 22-28) and you saw what happened.

“We’re five days from turning this around. Guys pitch well five days in a row and the narrative changes," he continued. "We have to do it. We can’t talk about it like ‘We’ll be fine, we’ll be fine, we’ll be fine. No. Right now we’re not fine. We just have to pitch better. Have better at-bats and play baseball. That the bottom line.”

But in the week he talked about, the Red Sox were playing teams they were trying to gain on, they need help now.

If the Rays, which were the second wild card team going into Monday’s action, go 25-24 in their last 49 games - that’s a .510 winning percentage, lower than the .575 they’d been playing at - they’d be 90-72 after 162. The Red Sox would have to go 33-15 to finish tied with Tampa in that scenario. That’s a 68.8 winning percentage, drastically higher not only than they’ve played all year, but higher than any team in baseball has. They need Tampa to be worse and they need to be drastically better. Not impossible, but a significant challenge.

Cora expressed both belief in his team and recognition of the size of the task.

“The effort is there. They know we can do this. It’s not a great spot obviously. We did it 10 days ago. A week ago, the narrative was different. It can change in a week,” Cora said. “We play good baseball this week and going into Cleveland and people might say this is the Wild Card series - two playoff contending teams are playing for a Wild Card spot. That’s how it works in baseball.”

He thinks there’s a run coming.

“Good teams go through stuff like this. Bad teams win 10 games in a row. I’m not saying we’re great or we’re bad, but we haven’t had that great stretch either,” he said. “We haven’t had that long sustainable winning streak, the 12 out of 15 or 18 out of 20. We think we can do it. It’s not about believing. It’s about doing it.”

Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora praises shortstop Xander Bogaerts throughout losing streak

Jason Kates

Before Monday night’s game versus the Kansas City Royals, Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora said he’s been impressed with the role shortstop Xander Bogaerts has played both on the field and in the clubhouse.

Cora was asked who he’s looked to for leadership in the midst of the team’s recent struggles, and he pointed to the 26-year-old, who is in the midst of a career year.

“I mean, I see Xander and the way he’s approaching the whole situation,” Cora said. "The way he’s playing and talking to players and just standing there for them. He’s been very honest and very genuine about it. We made a huge commitment to this guy and he’s playing the part, not only on the field but he’s becoming a leader of the team.”

This past April, the Red Sox announced Bogaerts had signed a six-year extension with the club, keeping him in Boston through 2025 with a vesting option in 2026.

Bogaerts is hitting .306 on the year with 25 home runs and 84 RBIs.

J.D Martinez scratched from Boston Red Sox lineup with back tightness

Jason Kates

In the midst of an 8-game losing streak, the Boston Red Sox will be without outfielder J.D Martinez for Monday night’s contest versus the Kansas City Royals.

After waking up feeling tightness in his back, Martinez, set to be the designated hitter, was removed from the starting lineup and replaced by catcher Sandy Leon, moving Christian Vazquez to the DH role.

“We scratched J.D.,” manager Alex Cora said before the game. “His back is acting up. It was a little tight. This morning he felt it, got treatment. It is what it is. We want to make sure he’s healthy. Hopefully he’ll be ready for tomorrow."

Andrew Benintendi will now bat fourth in the order while everyone else moves up a spot, leaving Leon in the nine hole.

* RedSox.com

Porcello gives Sox much-needed quality start

Ian Browne

To escape the depths of their longest losing streak in four years, the Red Sox got exactly what they so desperately needed: A quality start.

Perhaps it was fitting that it was Rick Porcello who provided it, holding the Royals to four hits and one run over six innings in a 7-5 victory.

No Red Sox starter has struggled more than Porcello (10-8, 5.54 ERA) this season. If Boston is going to get back to the team people thought it could be, it is going to be due to the resurgence of not just Porcello, but also Chris Sale, David Price and Andrew Cashner.

“That’s what we need and they know it,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “I believe in these guys and we believe in the group. They’ve done it before so [with] 15 days of good pitching, like I said, the narrative will be different. Or seven days of good pitching and our team will be different. Everything starts with them. It’s not that they’re putting pressure on [themselves]. They’re just working hard to get it right and today was a good beginning.”

The climb back to contention will need to start, quite literally, with the starters.

Porcello got the Red Sox back in the win column after eight straight losses. There were no quality starts during that losing streak.

“We need it,” Porcello said. “Eight-game skid and we needed to stop the bleeding and turn it around. So it was nice to go out there and have a positive start and contribute to a win.”

How much of a difference does it make when the defending World Series champions can get a quality start?

Consider this: The Sox are 31-11 when they get a quality start this season, and 14-1 in the last 15 games they’ve gotten one. When Boston doesn’t get a quality start, the club’s record is 29-44.

When the starter can hold off the opposition early, it buys the offense time to produce. And that’s what happened Monday, as Sam Travis smashed a two-run missile (with a projected distance of 429 feet, according to Statcast) over the Green Monster in left-center as part of a three-run third inning that gave Porcello a lead to work with.

Rafael Devers lofted a solo shot that just made it over the Monster in the fifth to give Porcello an even more comfortable cushion.

“Yeah, it’s just a part of the game,” Devers said of the recent struggles of his team. “I mean, obviously we had a rough week but we still believe in ourselves. We know what we’re capable of, so it was good to get on the right foot and get a win because we know we have the talent to get it so it’s just a matter of playing good baseball and moving forward.”

As bleak as things felt last week, the Sox still have 47 games left in the season. They trail the Rays by 5 1/2 games for the second Wild Card spot after Tampa Bay dropped Monday’s matchup against the Blue Jays.

Though it’s just one win -- and the Red Sox need a lot more where that came from -- the atmosphere in the home clubhouse was loose after the game. Brock Holt playfully spoke into the microphone connected to J.D. Martinez's boom box, playing the role of DJ. Third-base coach Carlos Febles got a laugh out of Devers when he asked a mock question during his interview.

“That’s kind of where we need to be in general,” said Porcello. “Obviously there’s some pressure, especially when you start losing with the talented team that we have. That’s kind of how we have to carry ourselves every day. We have to be relaxed and understand [we need] to focus on the task at hand and go out and execute it and that’s it. And block out whatever pressure and whatever else is going on, play the game and take it one pitch at a time.”

As for Porcello, he’s spent the last several days working out some mechanical flaws that he felt led directly to giving up six runs in four of his previous six starts.

“I’ve been working on it all week,” said Porcello. “I’ve been working on it all year and I finally got some things I feel like are sticking and working well.”

Given that he is one of the most respected players on the team, it has been hard for the Red Sox to watch Porcello struggle so much. It would make his resurgence that much sweeter.

“This guy, he keeps working,” said Cora. “Probably he’ll find something he needs to work on this week and try to get better. There’s no pressure on them. They understand we’ve got to do better. That’s the bottom line and for us to do this it starts with pitching and today was the first step.”

After 'precautionary' exit, Betts in the clear

Ian Browne

Red Sox right fielder Mookie Betts exited Monday night’s 7-5 win against the Royals in the top of the eighth inning with a left shin contusion, but is expected to be back in the starting lineup on Tuesday night.

Betts fouled a ball off his shin in the bottom of the seventh inning before walking. When the Royals made a pitching change later in the inning, Red Sox manager Alex Cora and a member of the training staff came out to check on Betts.

Betts did some running down the line and assured his skipper he could stay in the game. However, after watching Betts run the bases the rest of the inning (the reigning AL MVP Award winner would eventually come around to score on a two-run double from Andrew Benintendi) Cora made the decision to take him out of the game before the top of the eighth.

Yeah, just precautionary,” Cora said of taking Betts out of the game. “He fouled one off and you saw him running the bases. He didn’t look good. I just saw him down [in the clubhouse] and he should be good for [Tuesday].”

Brock Holt took over for Betts in the leadoff spot, but went to second base for the rest of the night. Michael Chavis switched from second to first. Sam Travis switched from first base to left field. Jackie Bradley Jr. went from center to right. Benintendi went from left to center.

J.D. scratched from opener with back discomfort

Ian Browne

In the midst of one of his best power surges of the season, Red Sox slugger J.D. Martinez had to be scratched from the lineup a couple of hours before Monday night’s game against the Royals due to discomfort in his back.

With the Red Sox trying to snap an eight-game losing streak, it wasn’t the best news.

“His back is acting up, a little bit tight,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “This morning he felt it, got treatment, so I’m going to stay away from him. It is what it is. Not going to push him out there. Got to make sure he’s healthy. We’ll stay away from him and hopefully he’ll be ready for tomorrow.”

With Martinez’s exit from the lineup, Andrew Benintendi slotted into the cleanup spot. Christian Vazquez moved from catcher to DH, and Sandy Leon got the start behind the plate.

The right-handed hitting slugger has dealt with back spasms multiple times this season. He missed three games from April 26-28 and four games from May 20-23 due to back issues.

Over his last 10 games, Martinez has homered four times and has 10 RBIs. Since July 20, he is hitting .381 and certainly looked no worse for wear in the four-game series at Yankee Stadium over the weekend when he went 5-for-12 with a homer and a .588 on-base percentage.

“He felt it this morning,” said Cora. “When he got up, he called [head athletic trainer] Brad [Pearson]. He got here early, got treatment, it wasn’t great. So we’ll stay away from him.”

Moreland working on mechanics

Activated from the injured list July 23, first baseman Mitch Moreland hasn’t been the same hitter as he was before suffering a back injury and then a right quad ailment.

In seven games and 21 at-bats since his activation, Moreland has four hits and no homers. He was out of the lineup on Monday due to the Red Sox facing a lefty in Royals’ starter Mike Montgomery.

“Mechanically he’s a little off,” Cora said. “Swing-wise, he’s been working hard. I saw his session yesterday before the game. He got there early. All about balance with him. Seems like he’s pulling off.

“When Mitch is going good -- or lefties in general -- they start hitting the ball the other way, and he hasn’t been able to do that since he came back. Yesterday he worked on a few things balance-wise and hopefully the next time he starts he can start hitting the ball the other way.”

As swiftly as the Red Sox fell back in the standings -- going from a half-game up for the second Wild Card spot to 6 1/2 back in the span of eight days -- Cora thinks they can regain momentum just as quickly.

“We’ve got to come here and win series, that’s the bottom line. We win every series from now on and you put yourself in a good spot,” said Cora. “Doesn’t look great as far as math and percentages and all that. But I do believe we have talent and it’s just about putting a string of good pitching together.

“We did it for seven days, eight days, whatever it was. You saw what happened. We’re five days from turning this around. The guys pitch well five days in a row, I think the narrative changes. We have to do it. We can’t talk about it the whole time, like ‘We’ll be fine, we’ll be fine, we’ll be fine.’ No, right now we’re not fine. And we know it.

“We just have to pitch better. Put better at-bats and play baseball. Better baseball. That’s the bottom line. I mean, it’s not a great spot, obviously, but they’re in good spirits and ready to play.”

* WEEI.com

Making a case for keeping Rick Porcello around

Rob Bradford

It's easy to overreact to one game in a baseball season. Monday night was a perfect example.

The Red Sox break their eight-game losing streak by beating a Major League Baseball team (we think) called the Kansas City Royals, 7-5, at Fenway Park. The win coincided with all three of the teams the Sox are chasing for a Wild Card berth -- Cleveland, Oakland and Tampa Bay -- losing, putting Alex Cora's club 5 1/2 games out of the race to participate in a play-in game.

The tide has turned (or at least that's the reactionary road that was so easy to head down upon turning Monday into Tuesday).

Or how about Sam Travis? The first baseman so many chalked up as nothing more than a spring training wunderkind has actually found himself in a different conversation. Since popping up as an extra player in London Travis has proven himself to be a legitimate big-league threat, hitting .302 with a .879 OPS and three homers in 20 appearances, with the 25-year-old being presented Player of the Game honors by his teammates this time around thanks to a game-changing three-run homer.

Maybe Travis does represent a right-handed-hitting option at first base for 2020 that isn't named Bobby Dalbec.

Then there is Rick Porcello.

At first blush suggesting that the righty should be prioritized for next year's starting rotation seems like the ultimate knee-jerk reaction. Sure Porcello offered the Red Sox the kind of outing they so very desperately needed, allowing one run over six innings. At least six innings and one run or fewer from a starter? We hadn't seen that from a Sox starter since July 22 and was a feat accomplished by a member of the rotation just three times throughout the entirety of July. (Conversely, the Astros' starters have already managed this kind of feat three times in August after doing it on nine occasions last month.)

It was exactly what the Red Sox needed.

But for most, this simply represented a blip against one of the worst-hitting teams in the American League. Porcello still is a pitcher with a 5.54 ERA who has benefitted from an unworldly amount of run support. It was a step in the right direction, but just a step.

What this should have been, however, is a reminder, one which should be considered when thinking about 2020. Despite the numbers. No matter the image portrayed for much of the season. This is a guy the Red Sox should consider makimng part of their plans for next season. A leader on the team. One who has shown the ability to dig himself out of the deepest of holes. And a pitcher who can offer moments like Monday.

"This guy, he keeps working," Cora said. "Probably he’ll find something he needs to work on this week and try to get better. There’s no pressure on them. They understand we’ve got to do better. That’s the bottom line and for us to do this it starts with pitching and today was the first step."

"That’s my job," the pitcher noted. "I get the ball every five days and I’m expected to mentally be in the right place and physically be in the right place. It’s not the first time I struggled before so I feel I have the mental capacity to bounce back from that kind of stuff and today was a good start moving in the right direction."

Porcello told WEEI.com moments before Opening Day that he had tried to get some sort of commitment beyond 2019, offering the team a discounted rate for a valued 30-year-old starting pitcher with no injury history and coming off a 17-win campaign. As he said at the time:

"I’ve been here for four years now, I’ve learned a lot and I’ve really enjoyed playing for and representing this organization and this city. It’s kind of where my heart is. It doesn’t always work out like that to be able to continue to live it out or follow through. That part, at this point, is a little disappointing. Just keep on trucking and see where it ends up."

Where it has ended up is far from ideal for Porcello. But there is still a path for his return. It's called a qualifying offer.

Let's just say the QO ends up being around $18 million. For one year at that price with what Porcello delivers, isn't that worth it? Sure, it might be more than he could get in this era's open market, but the tradeoff is the opportunity for the pitcher who is undeniably an alpha in that clubhouse to round out a rotation that is pretty much set from top to bottom thanks to previous financial commitments.

There are no logical minor-leaguers in the Red Sox system who would be deemed worthy of being thrown into the starting rotation mix in 2020 (with Darwinzon Hernandez looking more and more like a better fit as a late-inning reliever). So, why not? There would be no chance Porcello turns down the offer, with teams immediately scared off because of the draft picks which would be needed to sign the righty.

The plan might be a little unorthodox considering the level of players usually considered for such a financial commitment. But much like the unique cases free agents-to-be such as Zack Wheeler and Cole Hamels will present their current clubs, the same can be said for Porcello.

Maybe the Red Sox simply view the financial hit -- albeit just for a year -- as too big to swallow, especially considering the money they already have tied up in Chris Sale, David Price and Nathan Eovaldi. And there is always the chance this fifth and final spot in the rotation is being earmarked for someone not even in the organization, and worthy of allocation trade pieces this offseason. But with all we know about Porcello, this should be a consideration.

There are plenty of more starts to go and a lot of time weeks before decision-day. What we saw Monday night, however, should have at least got you -- and the Red Sox -- thinking.

The Red Sox won their eighth straight game against the Royals, their longest winning streak against the club, having won seven in a row during the 1969-70 and 1998 seasons.

Mookie Betts on whether players were bothered by Red Sox' lack of deadline activity: 'You could say yes, you could say no'

Alex Reimer

Mookie Betts’ equivocation is worth a thousand words. It’s apparent the reigning MVP is frustrated with the Red Sox’ decision to stand pat at the trade deadline.

In a pre-game interview Saturday with Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal, Betts stammered when asked about Dave Dombrowski’s failure to extend himself for an additional bullpen arm. In a press conference last week, Dombrowski said he would’ve felt more compelled to surrender prospects if the team was closer to first place.

Since then, the Red Sox have dropped six straight games, including four brutal contests against the Yankees over the weekend.

“Uhh, I mean … you could say ‘yes,’ you could say, ‘no,’” Betts replied to Rosenthal. “That’s stuff in the clubhouse we can’t control. It’s from the top. We’ve got a talented group. We’ve proven we can do it. It’s just a matter of going out, executing and taking care of what we can.”

Red Sox players, for their part, have failed to accomplish that as well. They’ve been outscored 58-32 over their brutal eight-game losing skid, which started three days before Dombrowski’s deadline flop.

In addition to the woeful starting pitching, Red Sox hitters have failed to come up in big spots as of late. They went 3-for-19 with runners in scoring position this weekend. Betts was 2-for-16 against Yankees pitching.

* NBC Sports Boston

Five days, six starts, no wins -- how the Red Sox rotation has destroyed this season

John Tomase

The reality of the 2019 Red Sox season can be boiled down to one sentence: the starters never gave them a chance.

Forget about the bullpen, the struggles with runners in scoring position, the trade deadline letdown. This last turn through the rotation neatly encapsulates everything wrong with the starters, how they collectively failed at every turn, and why this remains such a massive concern moving forward, because news flash -- without changes, we'll be having the exact same conversation in 2020.

Want to know where this season went to seed? Let's take a stroll through the last six games, one starter at a time, and find some answers.

Rick Porcello: Rays 8, Red Sox 5 Hours after the trade deadline turned out to be a dud, Porcello delivered one.

After allowing a run in the first and smashing a pair of dugout monitors in frustration, Porcello went out in the second and served up a pair of homers -- a leadoff shot to Kevin Kiermaier and a three-run blast from Austin Meadows. It was one bad inning in a season full of them.

Yankees troll Red Sox with post-sweep celebration The former Cy Young Award winner suddenly looks like a pitcher whose low-90s stuff simply doesn't play anymore. He's 9-8 with a 5.74 ERA and trending in the wrong direction. The only reason he's 4-2 since June 23 is because the Red Sox seem to score 10 runs every time he starts. His 9.35 ERA in that span suggests he has needed every run.

Porcello is in the final year of his contract and loves Boston, which is no small thing. He's also a clubhouse leader. But intangibles mean nothing when his starts turn Fenway Park into the world's largest pinball machine.

The Red Sox already felt deflated because of the deadline. By the time Porcello was done, they were reeling.

Andrew Cashner: Rays 9, Red Sox 4 The Red Sox acquired in an acknowledgment that Nathan Eovaldi was done for the season. Eovaldi's absence has simply murdered the bullpen, thanks to three months of three-inning starts made by the likes of every Josh, Ryan, and Hector to roll through Pawtucket.

Cashner was supposed to provide stability, based on a breakout age-32 season that saw him go 9-3 for the woeful Orioles. Red-flag alert: he has posted only one other winning season in his 10-year career, and his stuff isn't exactly electric. Redder-flag alert: the Phillies reportedly passed on him over makeup concerns.

In four starts since joining the Red Sox, Cashner is 1-3 with a 6.94 ERA. The ERA would be worse except for a scoring change from this loss to Tampa Bay Cashner appeared ill-equipped to handle the bright lights of the pennant race, allowing seven hits and five walks in 5.2 innings. He botched a chopper in front of the plate that was generously ruled a single, forced in a run with a walk, and crossed up catcher Sandy Leon for a passed ball that scored another.

Say hello to the big deadline acquisition. It turns out he's no savior.

Eduardo Rodriguez: Yankees 4, Red Sox 2 On the list of disappointments, E-Rod rates as least objectionable. He leads the staff in wins (13), innings (135.1), and ERA (4.19). He has pitched into the seventh inning 10 times. He opened as the fifth starter, and were he still in that role, he'd be having a hell of a season.

Unfortunately, he's kinda sorta the ace at the moment, and it does not suit him. Case in point: Friday night in New York.

J.D. Martinez gave the Red Sox a 2-0 lead in the first with a two-run homer, sparking hopes that the offense would once again go nuclear on Yankees pitching. But first there was the little matter of the bottom of the frame, and Rodriguez imploded.

Two walks and a single loaded the bases with one out, and then Rodriguez badly missed with a fastball that was supposed to be up to Gleyber Torres. It caught too much of the plate and then all of Torres' barrel, sailing out to left for a back-breaking grand slam.

Rodriguez righted the ship, but the damage had been done. The demoralized and broken Red Sox never mounted a serious threat, and their lost weekend was off and stumbling.

Chris Sale: Yankees 9, Red Sox 2 If there's one person responsible for the travails of 2019, it's Sale. Signed to a $145 million extension to be the stopper, he has instead leaked like a sieve, with the Red Sox losing 15 of his 23 starts. He delivered his most embarrassing outing in Yankee Stadium in a performance that illustrated the futility and frustration of his season.

With two outs and two on in the fourth, Sale found himself just one pitch away from escaping with a 1-1 tie. That pitch never came. He allowed five consecutive hits, including a three-run homer to D.J. LeMahieu before being lifted. He ended up being charged with seven runs in the frame, and eight in the game.

Making matters worse, one of the most accountable players on the team finally lost it and blasted home plate ump Mike Estabrook for a blown strike three call on Gio Urshela earlier. Never mind the rockets that followed off the bats of hitters like Breyvic Valera and Brett Gardner, Sale blamed the umpire. He ended up being ejected before complaining some more in the postgame about how the umps must be held to a higher standard.

It was a terrible, terrible look for the guy who's so confident in his stuff, he never shakes the catcher: put down whatever sign you want and I'll blow the guy away.

Not anymore. Salvaging him will be the greatest task for 2020.

Brian Johnson: Yankees 6, Red Sox 4 What's there to say? The replacement starters stink. Pressed into service by a doubleheader, Johnson lasted just three innings in his return from the IL. He allowed eight hits and luckily only three runs. If he hadn't started, someone like Ryan Weber would've posted the exact same numbers. Let's just move on.

David Price: Yankees 7, Red Sox 4 While it's tempting to draw a line at Price's pointless resuscitation of his feud with broadcaster Dennis Eckersley, his struggles actually predate that stupidity by more than a month. Since beating Tampa, 5-1, on June 8 and striking out 10, Price has looked barely pedestrian.

He's 3-3 with a 6.55 ERA and has reached the seventh inning exactly zero times. And this from the guy we've been calling the ace all season. His struggles reached a nadir on Sunday night.

With two outs in the third and the Red Sox leading 1-0, Price collapsed like Sale the day before. The next seven batters went homer, double, double, single, double, single, walk, before manager Alex Cora made another long trudge to the mound to remove yet another starter who hadn't even give him three innings, let alone five, let alone seven or eight.

Price's ERA shot to 4.36 -- its highest point since April 6 -- and his record fell to 7-5. So much for holding all the cards. Now they're scattered to the wind and Price is trying to see if he can recover 52 for a full deck.

That's five days and six starts where the Red Sox never had a chance. Want to know why 2019 has unfolded in such a disappointing fashion?

There's your answer.

* BostonSportsJournal.com

BSJ Game Report: Red Sox 7, Royals 5 – Boston hangs on to halt losing streak at 8

Greg A. Bedard

J.D. Martinez scratched, Mookie Betts exits: Not exactly the best news on the injury front when Martinez was scratched before the game because of back tightness. “It’s been acting up, a little bit tight,” Alex Cora said. “This morning he felt it, got treatment, so we’re going to stay away from him.” Christian Vázquez was moved into the DH spot and batted sixth. Andrew Benintendi was slotted fourth in the order and produced a two-run double that was the difference in the game. Betts left the game in the eighth inning after fouling a ball off his foot. Cora said he didn’t look good on the bases. “Precautionary,” he said. “I just saw him down there and he should be okay for tomorrow.”

Porcello has a strong start, bullpen tries to blow it: Rick Porcello, who had a 9.35 ERA in his previous seven starts, pitched six innings of four-hit ball and just allowed a solo home run in the sixth inning to leave with a 7-1 advantage. “Everything starts with them,” Cora said of the starters. “Today was a good beginning.” From there, it got interesting. Nathan Eovaldi allowed his own bomb on an 0-2 pitch. Matt Barnes allowed the first two runners to reach before retiring the next two … but allowed a three-run bomb to make it 7-5. Brandon Workman came on to finish the game, but allowed a one-out double. He retired the final two batters, including the last one with a very high strike to close it out.

Hammering at home: Sam Travis and Rafael Devers both went deep for the Sox. They have homered in each of their last 18 games at Fenway Park, the Sox’ longest streak in park history. Travis gave the Sox a 3- 0 lead in the third inning. Devers hit his 23rd in the fifth to make it 4-0.

TURNING POINT

Andrew Benintendi’s two-run double. Loved the hit and, especially, loved Xander Bogaerts hustling around the bases, blowing through a stop sign and scoring a very important run.

TWO UP

Rafael Devers: Went 2-for-4 and homered for the second time in his last three games. He’s the first Red Sox with 23-plus homers in a single season at the age of 22 or younger since Tony Conigliaro (28) and George Scott (27) both did so in 1966.

Andrew Benintendi: Had two doubles and two RBI and is batting .344 (32-for-93) with RISP this season (1-for-2 tonight). He’s hit .415 with nine doubles, five homers and 17 RBI.

TWO DOWN

Christian Vazquez: Got the late call to DH for Martinez and his performance was forgettable. He was hitless in four at-bats with three whiffs.

Matt Barnes: Three-run bomb to Bubba Starling in the eighth made it 7-5 and got things really tight at Fenway.

QUOTE OF NOTE

“We need to stop the bleeding and turn things around. So it was nice to be able to go out there and have a positive start and contribute to a win.” — Porcello.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

Red Sox recorded 10-plus hits in their eighth consecutive home game, their longest streak since 2016; The Red Sox are 31-11 (.738) when they receive a quality start this season, including 14-1 in their last 15. Workman converted his sixth save, tossing his fourth straight scoreless appearance: 43 of his 51 appearances have been scoreless. Michael Chavis (2-for-3 recorded multiple hits for the second straight game. He leads AL rookies with 29 multi-hit games. UP NEXT

Second of three with the Royals as RHP Andrew Cashner (10-6, 4.51) takes on RHP Jakob Junis (6-10, 5.03).

* The Athletic

Even if Red Sox play out the string, there’s a right way and a wrong way to it

Steve Buckley

Sunday afternoon: The Patriots announce a contract extension for Tom Brady.

Sunday evening: The Red Sox drop a 7-4 decision to the Yankees, thus sending the defending World Series champions stumbling out of the Bronx with four straight losses to the Bombers and fattening their worst-in- the-Alex Cora Era losing streak to eight games.

To use an old nautical term, this is what’s called two ships passing in the night. While the Patriots were settling all family business by removing Brady’s contract situation as a training camp talking point, the Red Sox have effectively signaled to Boston sports fans that they’ll be sitting out October. So in terms of Pats at Redskins (Oct. 6), Pats vs. Giants (Oct. 10), Pats at Jets (Oct. 21) and Pats vs. Browns (Oct. 27), don’t worry about any pesky Sox playoff games getting in the way.

Not that there’s such a thing as a “good” time for a baseball team to roll over and take itself out of playoff contention, but the Red Sox are supposed to represent a region where baseball still matters, where the ballpark is always filled, where there is an annual expectation of a deep playoff run. This is not a discussion as to which sport is the coolest kid in the class. In the grand scheme, it’s football. It’s just that here, in Boston, baseball remains a big deal. That is, until such time as the Red Sox fall out of contention, and then baseball is not a big deal. That’s always been the arrangement.

And here we are. Not even a return to Fenway Park Monday night to begin a convenient three-game series against the been-out-of-it-since-Opening Day Kansas City Royals can change what has happened over the past two weeks. The Red Sox went through a 14-game stretch in which they played only the Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays, a 14-game stretch that provided an opportunity for the Sox to prove they were up to the task of playing big-boy October baseball. As Cora put it during Monday’s media session, “We didn’t play well. We played two great teams and it was a tough stretch going in, we knew about it, started it off great and we finished bad. Basically that’s what happened.”

Specifically what happened was this: The Red Sox went 5-9 in those 14 games to fall 6 1/2 games out of the second wild card.

“Doesn’t look great as far as math and percentages and all that,” Cora acknowledged. “But I do believe we have talent and (it’s) just about putting a string of good pitching together. We did it for seven days, eight days, whatever it was. You saw what happened. We’re five days from turning this around. The guys pitch well five days in a row, I think the narrative changes.

“We have to do it. We can’t talk about it the whole time, like ‘We’ll be fine, we’ll be fine, we’ll be fine.’ No, right now we’re not fine. And we know it. We just have to pitch better. Put better at-bats and play baseball. Better baseball. That’s the bottom line. I think the guys know. We talked about it a little yesterday.”

So let’s say they don’t have that magical week and get right back in it. What if, say, they are seven, eight or nine games out of the second wild card by the close of business on Sunday? That would leave 43 games left to play, but not much to play for, and that’s when things sometimes get goofy for big-league ball clubs. The 2001 Red Sox turned into a team of whiners and malcontents after Joe Kerrigan replaced Jimy Williams as manager and things spiraled out of control. The 2011 Red Sox were 64-47 on August 6, just 2 1/2 games out of first place in the AL East and destined for the postseason. When the season ended they were 82-79 and destined for an overhaul. Manager Terry Francona was fired, GM Theo Epstein quit and soon we were adding “chicken and beer” into our Red Sox Urban Dictionary.

Here, then, is something the Red Sox can do even if there’s not much else to do: They can aspire to play with professionalism right til the end of the regular season. And yet already there have been signs of discord, confusion and a veering toward needless distractions.

It’s a fool’s errand to bring up David Price’s recent Dennis Eckersley rant, since it’s impossible to establish what, if anything, it has to do with the fact that the lefty has a 10.70 ERA in four starts since getting all hot and bothered over Eck. But we can agree on this: Price can’t spend any more time this season holding press conferences to express his concern with what NESN color analysts are saying.

Next up, the strange, twisted messages from Cora over whether he did, indeed, plan on having a team meeting prior to the series opener in New York. While pointing out that a players-only meeting was held in New York, Cora said on Monday that he “changed his mind” about the meeting he was planning.

Lastly, there’s the kvetching about the umpiring. Yes, plate umpire Mike Estabrook proved this past Saturday he has only a vague understanding of what the strike zone is all about. But for Sox starter Chris Sale to get ejected after being lifted from a game in which he would be charged with eight runs in 3 2/3 innings is a terrible look. Cora can be given some leeway for his ejection, since managers are often expected to kick up some dirt in defense of their players. But come on: Sale is 5-11 with a 4.68 ERA. It’s not all because of the umpiring.

To sum up: Over the last couple of weeks we’ve seen a) David Price call a press conference to announce that Dennis Eckersley is not popular with his former teammates, b) Cora announce that a team meeting would be held in New York, and then says that’s not exactly what he said, and then say he changed his mind about a meeting, and c) it’s all Mike Estabrook’s fault.

All of these things happened at a time when the Red Sox were still competing for the postseason. If the Sox don’t get back in it, it’s on Cora to make sure none of this stuff happens in September.

* The New York Times

Yankees Are Expecting Success, Injuries or Not

Tyler Kepner

Every day is fraught with worry for the Yankees. They made no trades at last week’s deadline. Their rotation is ordinary, their bullpen exhausted, their lineup crumbling. When Gio Urshela fouled a ball off his right thigh in the sixth inning Sunday night, the most predictable thing happened a few moments later: a foul off his left shin, of course.

“I was going up and down the dugout saying, ‘He’s going to hit a home run right here, it’s just bound to happen,’” Aaron Judge said. “The whole crowd was chanting his name. But this whole team’s tough. We know what we’ve been through.”

Urshela did not hit a home run, alas — he bounced to the pitcher — but by then he had already gone deep off David Price in a 7-4 Yankees victory that sealed a four-game sweep of the Boston Red Sox. At 72-39, the Yankees carry the American League’s best record into a stretch of 11 games against the lowly Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays.

“A little swollen,” said Urshela, whose legs were heavily bandaged after the game, “but I think I’m good.”

These would not be the Yankees, though, without some kind of troubling news: The All-Star infielder Gleyber Torres had a core muscle issue, Manager Aaron Boone said after the game, and was taken to a hospital for tests.

Torres turned out to be fine and was back in the lineup on Monday, but the Yankees have already sent Luke Voit (sports hernia), Edwin Encarnacion (broken right wrist) and Aaron Hicks (right flexor strain) to the injured list in the last five days. They have 16 players on the major league injured list, the most in the game.

“It’s been a crazy year in that way, with the amount of things that have happened to guys physically,” Boone said. “But it’s also been a real rallying cry for us. It’s not just brought a level of physical toughness to the room, but it’s forced guys to be mentally tough as well. It’s part of the hunger that exists with those guys, because they have the mindset of: Nothing’s going to get in our way and nothing’s going to stop us.”

The Yankees would surely welcome Encarnacion, Hicks, Voit and the other injured starters, Giancarlo Stanton and Gary Sanchez, back to the offense. They would love to add Luis Severino and Dellin Betances, who have been hurt all season, to the pitching staff. Some combination of that group will return down the stretch.

But the Yankees expect success either way — and while every team likes to say that, Boone’s team lives up to it. The Red Sox have their health, but a middling record (59-55). The Yankees are chronically injured but soaring.

In the clubhouse afterward, the Yankees played “More Than A Feeling” — by Boston, naturally — and got a pep talk from winning pitcher J.A. Happ, the players’ pick for star of the game.

“He won the belt tonight, for what a performance he did against a really good offense,” Judge said. “Anytime Jay speaks, he controls a room. He’s a veteran, he’s been around the game for a long time, done a lot of great things in this game. ‘Keep moving forward,’ that was his biggest message, just keep moving forward no matter what.”

Happ, 36, blanked the Red Sox for a while on Sunday before giving up four runs in the fifth and sixth. Boston knocked him out early in the playoff opener at Fenway last October, but the Red Sox are sinking fast now.

“A sweep is hard against any team, especially a four-game sweep and especially against these guys,” Happ said. “Anytime you can put a little distance from a team in your division, it’s huge.”

After humbling Chris Sale twice in a week, the Yankees leveled Price this time. Though he buried his big- game demons with a sterling World Series last fall, Price is 1-7 with a 9.61 earned run average for Boston at Yankee Stadium. The fans dialed up a classic for him after Judge’s homer in the first: “Who’s Your Daddy?”, the old Pedro Martinez salute.

The weekend thrashing left the Red Sox six and a half games out of a wild card spot and 14½ behind the Yankees in the East, with Tampa Bay in between. The Red Sox can hit, but their pitching has abandoned them. Their five starters have a combined E.R.A. of 4.84, and only a true diehard could name more than two Red Sox relievers.

Of course, the Yankees’ pitchers looked just as vulnerable at Fenway at the end of July, when the Red Sox flattened them for 38 runs in the first three games. The Minnesota Twins and the Houston Astros, both leading their divisions, also have slugging contact hitters and present similar problems.

The Astros added two starting pitchers, Zack Greinke and Aaron Sanchez, at the deadline, plus a reliever and a catcher. Sanchez was 3-14 for Toronto but fired the first six innings of a combined no-hitter in his Houston debut on Saturday.

The Yankees chose not to strengthen their pitching at the deadline, passing up every possible deal that could have helped the major league team. The prices were too steep, said General Manager Brian Cashman, who deserves the benefit of the doubt. Without the depth Cashman and his staff have assembled since last summer, this season would be a fiasco.

But you have to wonder why outfielder Clint Frazier remains in the organization. He was passed over again for a promotion when the Yankees placed Hicks on the injured list Sunday, and Boone said the Yankees did not even consider him. Frazier posted a cryptic but sad-looking photo on Instagram Sunday night — he is hanging his head under a red hoodie, with a “Scranton Life” sign lit up in the background — but he can hit and should be on a major league roster. If the Yankees truly have no use for Frazier, they should have dealt him, if only to improve around the margins.

Then again, the biggest lesson from this season is that, improbably, the Yankees really do have the answers within. Whenever one sturdy piece falls, another sprouts in its place.

Latest Casualty of M.L.B.’s Changing Ball: Masahiro Tanaka’s Splitter

James Wagner, The New York Times

It was the split-finger fastball that helped Masahiro Tanaka become a star in his native Japan and then jump to the United States and a $155 million contract with the Yankees in 2014.

At its best, the pitch darts sharply inward and down against right-handed batters. Its drastic late movement has left batters whiffing a third of the time they have swung at it — managing a measly .195 batting average against Tanaka’s splitter from 2014 through last season.

But like many puzzled pitchers around the majors these days, Tanaka has not been able to get his trademark pitch to behave quite the way it used to. He has clearly struggled this season — he was on pace for a career- high walk rate and earned run average (4.78) entering his start against the Baltimore Orioles on Monday.

Tanaka did well early against the Orioles and took a 6-1 lead into the sixth inning, when he allowed four more runs and departed with one out. The Yankees ended up with a 9-6 win even though Tanaka allowed 10 hits, walked two batters and pushed his E.R.A. to 4.93.

Analyzing his difficulties on the mound, Tanaka has identified a possible culprit, as have many other pitchers: the baseball itself.

“You grip the ball, and it feels a little bit different,” Tanaka said recently through the interpreter Shingo Horie. “And then when you’re throwing with that difference in hand, obviously the movement of the ball becomes a little bit different, too.”

To compensate for that unfamiliar feeling, Tanaka, 30, has begun tinkering with his grip, hoping to restore his mastery of the splitter.

It’s no secret in this era of record home-run rates that many players believe the ball has changed. The Minnesota Twins are on pace to smash the season home run record of 267, which was set by the Yankees last year. And this year’s major league hitters could exceed the record 6,105 long balls hit last season by more than 600 homers.

As dissent bubbled, Major League Baseball commissioned a study that was released last year and found that the ball had less drag, which allowed it to travel farther, but the researchers could not pinpoint the cause of the change. A report by The Athletic in June found that the seams of some 2019 balls were lower than those on the balls from 16 previous seasons, a change that would improve the aerodynamics.

All of this led to more expressions of concern, both from established pitchers who are having stellar seasons — such as Washington’s Max Scherzer and Houston’s Justin Verlander, who claimed the balls were intentionally juiced for more home runs — and from those who are laboring, such as Tanaka and his Yankees teammate J.A. Happ.

M.L.B. Commissioner Rob Manfred has fiercely pushed back against the notion that the balls used by the league — which are made with natural materials and hand-sewn in Costa Rica — had been deliberately changed.

“Baseball has done nothing, given no direction, for an alteration in the baseball,” he said at the All-Star Game last month.

That hasn’t appeased many pitchers.

For so long, Tanaka has placed his index and middle fingers along two seams of the baseball to throw his splitter, while other pitchers spread their fingers farther out. This season, Tanaka said, he has noticed a difference in the seams, and thus the behavior of the splitter.

“It’s not giving you the vertical drop,” he said.

Tanaka’s splitter dips less downward and more sideways this year compared with previous seasons, according to BrooksBaseball, a pitching analytics site.

“It looks more like a two-seamer,” Tanaka said, referring to an entirely different pitch.

The result: Before Monday’s game, opponents were hitting .292 against Tanaka’s splitter, a career high. They hit .191 against his favorite pitch in 2017 and .220 in 2018. Of the 21 home runs Tanaka had allowed this season before Monday, eight came off splitters, more than off any of his other pitches.

He managed to earn an All-Star spot, but his performances since the break have slipped, and his confidence in the splitter has clearly wavered, too. In his July 25 start against the Boston Red Sox, Tanaka surrendered a career-high 12 runs in three and one-third innings. He threw only four splitters, matching a career low, and the Red Sox whiffed at none of them.

Tanaka, a right-hander, has relied more on his four-seam fastball and his slider, which has been his best pitch this season and does not require him to rely on the seams.

“We need to adjust to the ball,” Tanaka said. “That’s what we’re given to play, and you’ve got to find your way to get accustomed to the ball right now and be effective enough to get outs.”

But change is hard. For two months, the Yankees pitching coach, Larry Rothschild, has talked with Tanaka about altering the grip on his splitter.

“We’ve just got to get comfortable with it,” Rothschild said.

Tanaka said he had tried tweaks, but they have been minor. In his previous start, against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Wednesday, he used a drastically new grip for the first time, setting his index and middle fingers across the seams instead of along them.

He threw 27 splitters and matched a season high by inducing six whiffs, according to BrooksBaseball. He allowed just two runs in four innings, baby steps for him and for a sputtering Yankees rotation that needed to improve from within since no additions were made at the July 31 trade deadline.

“I had to tinker a little bit here and there during the ballgame as well,” Tanaka said of the new splitter. “But I feel like it’s heading in the right direction.”

Zack Britton, the Yankees relief pitcher who uses a seam to throw a mid-90s sinking fastball, said he had heard from other pitchers who have struggled to adjust to the balls and tweaked their grips as a result.

“Over the years, I’ve felt like I’d had to do something a little different to make the ball move as much as maybe it did like four years ago,” Britton said. “There’s been some pitches I throw and I rip one off, and I’ll go look at the data and then look at that pitch three years ago and be like, the numbers are close, but there’s a different feeling with it, to an extent, with the baseballs.”

The normally measured Tanaka offered a pointed response when asked about his feelings on the current ball.

“If you changed the ball, then just say you changed it,” he said. “That would make everybody feel better, in a sense.”

Then his focus turned inward. “The frustration for me is that I’m not being able to adjust well enough to the ball,” he said. “So it’s toward me right now, and it started at the beginning of the season. You want the ball to do a certain thing, but you’re not able to really make good enough adjustments to do that.”

Inside Pitch

Mike Tauchman hit two homers to raise his season (and M.L.B. career) total to nine, and Mike Ford, called up over the weekend, hit the go-ahead homer in the eighth inning. It was his second in the majors.

* The Kansas City Star

Royals in giving mood as slide continues with loss to Red Sox

Lynn Worthy

In a classic “something’s gotta give” match between a Royals team limping into Boston having lost six straight and 9 of 10 and a Boston Red Sox club having lost eight straight, the Royals did a lot of giving.

The Royals gave via the home run. They gave via the error. They gave via the wild pitch. In total they gave seven runs, including two unearned, and it was enough to snap the Red Sox losing slide.

Meanwhile, the Royals still haven’t won a game on their road trip and have now lost seven in a row after a 7-5 defeat in front of an announced 33,636 in the first game of a three-game set at Fenway Park on Monday night.

In his best start since being re-acquired from the Chicago Cubs, Royals starting pitcher Mike Montgomery allowed four runs (two earned) on seven hits and one walk.

He also showed a lot of swing-and-miss stuff against a potent lineup. He struck out seven batters in five innings, his most strikeouts in an outing since he struck out eight at Arizona on Sept. 18, 2018.

“That was probably the best stuff I’ve had all year,” Montgomery said. “You’re always looking for results, but for me personally it’s definitely something to build off of. I made a lot of good quality pitches. I’d like the mistake back with the two-run homer.”

Royals infielder Cheslor Cuthbert hit his seventh home run of the season, while rookie catcher Meibrys Viloria, who got called up from Double A after the club traded Martin Maldonado to the Chicago Cubs, hit his first major-league home run.

Bubba Starling also homered, while Whit Merrifield and Hunter Dozier had two hits apiece. Merrifield snapped an 0-for-10 streak with his fifth inning single.

The Red Sox (60-55) scored three of their runs via the home run, including a two-run blast by Sam Travis in a three-run third inning. Montgomery was kicking himself post-game for opting to throw a two-seam fastball and leaving it over the middle of the plate instead of throwing his four-seamer and getting it up and in as he intended.

Rafael Devers, who entered the day leading the American League in hits (144) over Merrifield (141), hit a curveball off Montgomery for solo homer on a fly ball to the opposite field that carried into the seats above the green monster in the fifth.

“It’s a pop-up,” Montgomery said. “It’s a combination of this park and the baseball now a days. You’ve just got to accept it. You’re pissed at the time because you think it’s an out, but that’s just the game we have now. You’ve got to move on and understand those things are going to happen.”

Kevin McCarthy pitched a scoreless sixth inning to keep the game within reach, and Viloria’s first home run came in the top of the seventh to make it 4-2.

“I’m really happy that I hit my first home run and where I hit it, a stadium with this much history,” Viloria said. “At the same time, I’m not happy that we lost this ballgame.”

Royals relief pitchers Timmy Hill and Scott Barlow combined to give up three runs in the seventh inning as the Red Sox stretched their lead from 4-2 to 7-2.

Hill gave up a single and a walk to start the inning before getting Devers to fly out. Barlow allowed a run to score on a wild pitch, walked a batter and allowed two more runs (one charged to Hill) on an Andrew Benintendi double.

“We kept battling back, battling back, battling back,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “Mac came in the sixth and did a great job of holding the fort. I’m thinking if we can hold it, we’re in pretty good shape. We just couldn’t. We ended up giving up the three, which was a back-breaker right there.”

Starling’s second major-league home run, a three-run shot over the monster off Red Sox reliever Matt Barnes, pulled the Royals (40-74) within two runs going into the ninth.

The Royals couldn’t push a run across in the ninth.

* Associated Press

Porcello, Travis help Red Sox halt 8-game skid, 7-5 over KC

The music was blaring in the clubhouse and Boston utility player Brock Holt was holding a microphone, acting like a DJ.

The defending World Series champion Red Sox were clearly ready to relax and have fun again.

Rick Porcello pitched six innings of one-run ball, Sam Travis hit a two-run homer and the Red Sox halted their eight-game losing streak with a 7-5 victory over the struggling Kansas City Royals on Monday night.

"That's kind of where we need to be in general," Porcello said. "Some pressure when you start losing, especially with the talented team we have. That's kind of how we need to be every day, kind of relaxed and focus on the task in hand."

Rafael Devers added a solo shot for the Red Sox. Travis' gave Boston a homer in a club-record 18 straight games in Fenway Park. The old mark was set in 1969.

Bubba Starling, Meibrys Viloria and Cheslor Cuthbert each went deep for Kansas City, with Viloria's his first homer in the majors and Starling's a three-run shot.

It was the seventh straight loss for the Royals, who had a 10-game skid in the season's first two weeks.

Porcello (10-8), who smashed a pair of TV monitors in the Fenway dugout in frustration in his last start, gave up four hits, walked two and struck out five.

The only thing he broke this time was the defending World Series champions' losing streak. It was their first win since beating the rival Yankees at home on July 27 and moved them 5 1/2 games behind Tampa Bay for the AL's second wild-card spot.

"Obviously we had a rough week, but we still believe in ourselves," Devers said through a translator.

The longest skid for a defending champ is 11 games, done by both the 1998 then-Florida Marlins (twice) and the 1986 Royals.

Boston's starters had a 10.95 ERA over the eight-game skid.

Brandon Workman got the final three outs for his sixth save.

Making his fourth start since being acquired from the Chicago Cubs in July, Mike Montgomery (1-5) gave up four runs -- two earned -- over five innings and fell to 0-3 since joining the Royals.

"I thought he threw the ball fine. He did a nice job," Royals manager Ned Yost said. "He gave us a chance to win the game."

In their first time through the order against Montgomery, the Red Sox struck out five times. Boston jumped ahead with three runs the second time.

Mookie Betts opened the third inning with a walk and Devers singled. Shortstop Nick Lopez booted Xander Bogaerts' grounder, with Betts scoring from third.

After Andrew Benintendi bounced into a double play, Travis hit his shot into the Green Monster seats. Devers hit his over the Monster in the fifth.

Benintendi's two-run double highlighted a three-run seventh that made it 7-2.

QUICK WORK

Viloria's homer went over the Monster and the ball bounced onto the field, where it rolled it down the line and was picked up by a ball girl, who gave it to a child in the first row.

Some in the Royals dugout yelled and finally got her attention before throwing her a ball. She quickly went over and swapped it.

"(I) wasn't even aware of that but (I'm) glad they gave it to (me)," Viloria said through a translator.

CRUNCHING NUMBERS

Boston manager Alex Cora knows his team's in a big hole.

"We've got to win series. That's the bottom line," he said before the game. "If you win every series from now on, you put yourself in a good spot. If we do something great as far as math and percentages and all that, I do believe that we do need a streak of putting good pitching together. We can't talk about it, `We'll be fine. We'll be fine.' Right now, we're not fine."

TRAINER'S ROOM

Royals: INF Adalberto Mondesi (left shoulder) is with the team doing his rehab work, but Yost said it's likely a while before he returns to the lineup.

Red Sox: DH J.D. Martinez was scratched from the lineup due to back tightness. . Cora and a trainer came out to check on Betts when he was on first in the seventh. He stayed in but limped around the bases on Benintendi's double and was removed with a left shin contusion.

UP NEXT

Royals: RHP Jakob Junis (6-10, 5.03 ERA) is slated to start on Tuesday. He's pitched at least six innings in 11 of his last 14 starts.

Red Sox: RHP Andrew Cashner (10-6, 4.51) is set to start for Boston and is looking to set a career high in wins.

Pedro suggests smaller ball contributing to HRs

Pedro Martinez had signed his autograph on the sweet spot of the baseball when he grabbed it by the seams and pointed out that his middle and pointer fingers should not have been touching on the ball. The Hall of Fame pitcher used the demonstration to show why he believes the balls are too tight since he last pitched in 2009, and thus easier for batters to hit home runs.

"I've seen a lot of homers that shouldn't be homers," Martinez said.

Martinez squeezed his name and Hall of Fame year (2015) and uniform number (45) between the seams on the ball and used the tight fit to further illustrate his case that the ball is juiced.

"For those of you that doubt it, that don't know it, look how small my signature needs to be," he said. "Some of the skinniest fingers. If I want to throw a two-seam fastball, there's no way I can get my two fingers in there and not touch the seams over there."

Martinez has joined the chorus of former and current pitchers -- notably Houston's Justin Verlander, who complained during the All-Star break that the balls were juiced -- who believe baseball has turned into a home run derby. There have been 4,635 homers hit entering Monday's games, and players going deep multiple times in a game has become quite common -- Colorado's Nolan Arenado and San Francisco's Donovan Solano did it Sunday, marking 21 straight days at least one player has had a two-homer game.

Watching from a suite, Martinez saw three players from the White Sox go deep against Philadelphia on a day the 2009 National League champions were honored. Martinez was a late-season pickup in 2009 and went 5-1 down the stretch to lead the Phillies to their second straight World Series appearance. The Phillies lost to the New York Yankees in six games, and Martinez went 0-2 in two starts against the Yankees with a 6.30 ERA -- but has long said he was sick during his Game 6 start at Yankee Stadium and always wished he could have that one back.

Martinez, who turned to baseball studio work in retirement, said it was more than an asthma attack in the middle of the game that affected his performance. Martinez, who finished with a 219-100 record and a 2.93 ERA over his 18-year career, said the Phillies battled swine flu during the series.

There was a swine flu pandemic in 2009 in the United States. Swine flu doesn't usually infect humans, but human infections were reported.

"It wasn't told, but most of us were sick," Martinez said. "Some of the guys were under the swine flu. Some of them had to be a little bit away. I caught some it. I didn't know I caught some of the virus. We would just never say it."

Martinez struck out 3,154 batters and walked 760 in 2,827⅓ innings with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Montreal Expos, Boston Red Sox, New York Mets and Phillies. He twice won 20 games, twice struck out more than 300 batters and twice posted an ERA below 2.00. He was an eight-time All-Star, and five times he led the major leagues in ERA.

A three-time Cy Young Award winner who anchored the staff that helped the Red Sox win the 2004 World Series, Martinez had a famous quote that still echoes in baseball to this day. He once said of Boston's hated rival in the American League East, "Just tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy."

The chant popped up Sunday night in New York after the Yankees pounded David Price in a 7-4 victory that sent the defending World Series champion Red Sox to their eighth consecutive defeat. The rollicking sellout crowd of 47,267 gave a struggling Price the Martinez treatment, chanting "Who's your daddy?" during his latest flop at Yankee Stadium.

Martinez chuckled as he said Yankees fans still yell at him on the street, "Who's your daddy?"

The 47-year-old Martinez never pitched again after 2009, though he said former Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. had promised to bring him back for a final season.

"I made a mistake by kicking everybody aside to wait for this team and then it didn't happen," Martinez said in the dugout. "I was actually told by Ruben that they were going to go after me, so I told the other teams no. Wait. The call never came. I had three teams in mind that I wanted to play for or else I wasn't going to go. Philadelphia was No. 1."

Red Sox's Martinez scratched with back tightness

Red Sox slugger J.D. Martinez has been scratched from Monday night's lineup due to back tightness.

Boston manager Alex Cora told the media of Martinez about two hours before the Red Sox were slated to host the Kansas City Royals at Fenway Park.

"It's been acting up, a little bit tight," Cora said. "This morning he felt it, got treatment, so we're going to stay away from him."

The Red Sox enter the game on an eight-game losing streak, their longest since they dropped eight in a row in July 2015. Their next longest is 10 straight, done in May 2014.

The defending World Series champions are also six-plus games out of a playoff spot and trail the American League East-leading Yankees by 14-plus games after getting swept in a four-game series over the weekend against their rivals in New York.

With Martinez -- the club's usual cleanup hitter -- not in the lineup, Christian Vazquez was moved into the designated hitter spot and will bat sixth. Andrew Benintendi was slotted fourth in the order.

Martinez is batting .299 with 24 home runs and 65 RBIs, far off the pace of last season when he put up 43 homers and an MLB-leading 130 RBIs.