Uh, the Red Sox can be really struggling

It's a bad idea to read too much in the April baseball games, but the two games played this week in front of the New York Yankees seem to have officially launched the crisis in the Boston Red Sox. The team's record dropped to 6-13 – tied for second place for a defending champion since 1947 (trailing the 1998 Marlins discount sale) – and they landed again at the last place of the American League of East.

"It's embarrassing for my family, my team, and our fans," said Chris Sale, Boston ace, after giving four points in five sets in Tuesday's 8-0 loss. "It's about as bad as it gets. I have to throw better. "

"We do not play very well anywhere," said Dave Dombrowski, president of baseball operations at Red Sox. "Our starting pitcher was not very good, our defense was not too good, our shot was not as if she were able to be it."

As Dombrowski suggests, Boston has honestly crossed its horrible record: only the fearsome Miami Marlins (-49 under reconstruction) have a worse performance differential than the Red Sox of -42 this season. Good teams can sometimes suffer from bad hopes, but the same goes for teams that are expected to perform as well as Boston, especially after last year's 108 wins. Since the Second World War, only six other teams having started a season with an Elo ranking of at least 1562 (like the 2019 Red Sox) had all 19 games in which they won six games or less – a lot less if they were the only 19 games we saw from them.

(The good news for the Red Sox?) These other teams recorded an average of 94.3 wins for 162 games, even with bad series of 19 games and none won less than 87. But again, these 19 games are not the only evidence we had about teams to start the season.)

It was still likely that the Red Sox would regress – and maybe even a lot – after last year's storybook season. But no one could have predicted that the wheels would fall so quickly and so completely. According to WAR wins, the Red Sox went from the third-best MLB team last season (behind the Astros and Yankees) to the fourth worst of this year (ahead of the Orioles, Marlins and Rockies). For the two categories in which the team placed in the top six last season (home strikes and shots), Boston is in the bottom nine (including the worst baseline start) and the bullpen also dropped from top five to the bottom half of the league:

In the office, the team probably missed Craig Kimbrel, who recorded 1.8 WAR last season but has not been re-signed (and remains free today). But the story of the 2019 Red Sox is the retrenchment of last year's championship team – and most have not achieved the performance standards they set for themselves a season ago.

Shortstop Xander Bogaerts played well early in the season, forward David Price and first baseman Mitch Moreland were strong, and third baseman Rafael Devers improved on on the disappointing second year. But these gains do not make up for the declines of Mookie Betts and J. D. Martinez and the substitutes begin with Jackie Bradley Jr., Eduardo Nunez, Rick Porcello, Eduardo Rodriguez, Nathan Eovaldi and – most concerning – Sale.

Betts entrusted much of his responsibility to the slow start of the team. "Basically, what I'm doing is unacceptable," Betts said Monday. "I have to find a way to do something and help the team."

However, the MVP in charge at AL should start sooner or later to correct the situation. His batting average in play (BABIP) is unbearably low .208 this season, which suggests a lot of potential for improvement. Most of his Statcast stats match those of his career before last year's season – while he was still a .292 / .351 / .488 batter with exceptional defensive skills.

If Betts will go well, Sale is a big worry. The southpaw's fast ball speed was weak in three out of four starts, although it averaged 96.1 mph against the Yankees on Tuesday (which is close to the final season before a brusque fall in September). . Apart from the results obtained with the radar detectors, Sale also achieves a career record of 2.5 batters in nine innings and has already yielded nearly half the number of circuits (five) that he has obtained. Last year. The Red Sox have enough other talented players to stay a good team a tough year in less than Dirty, but they might not be able to become a really great team without him who has launched thoroughly.

And are they really a good team, despite this horrible beginning? Or will this season end up turning into a disaster like Boston's last defense? As bad as the Red Sox seemed, it seems always foolish to count them. In a sport where it takes 67 games before a team's record is almost equal to half the odds and half of the skill, 19 games should not be of much importance to our expectations for an upcoming team. Even after this difficult start, our Elo model gives the Sox a score of 1538, which equals the talent needed to win about 89 times out of 162 games. It's only five-and-a-half times the number of talent wins that Elo had thought of before the first day.

But the problem is that the Red Sox have to live with this record of 6-13 that they have accumulated so far. If they play as a team of 89 wins during the rest of the season, they will only have 85 wins at the end of the season. In a division where the Tampa Bay Rays and even the up and down Yankees are on track for 92 or more wins, 85 to 90 wins could leave Boston at the edge of the playoffs. (And to get, say, 95 wins, they would have to play at a pace of 102 wins for the rest of the season.) Although it's often said that the MLB season is a marathon and not a sprint, do not do that. I would not be surprised if Boston's first fights forced him to run around just to win second place for the Wild Card.

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