Who Are the Red Sox? Decisions Depend on Craig Breslow’s Reading

Red Sox

We know what the Red Sox need: a bullpen, left-handed hitters, a starting pitcher. It’s clear what it’s going to cost: a lot.

COMMENT

Great seasons can turn into small moments.

If Tyler O’Neill catches Trent Grisham’s game-tying double in the ninth inning of Saturday’s game, the Red Sox will win their series against the Yankees instead of losing it. New York won’t have a “hallmark weekend,” as the New York Post called it Monday morning, and still has just one series win since visiting Fenway in mid-June.

Could O’Neill have caught it? Sure. Should he have?

“The ball hit the wall,” the slugger told reporters Saturday night. “Unfortunately, it’s just out of my reach.”

“He walked away from him. I haven’t seen the video or anything, but it’s not easy,” manager Alex Cora added. “It’s a one-off in any other place. We’re playing here. That’s it.”

I’ll stick with the possibility. O’Neill’s run to the ball is awkward, he seems to have trouble judging it and looking toward Jarren Duran in center field. His final move, which confirms Cora’s assertion, is to go perpendicular to the wall as the ball continues to drift toward center.

O’Neill had to go about 60 feet after being hit, but he did so largely as the ball struck the monster not much higher than his head. Defensively, he’s been a bottom-of-the-chart player this year. Three outs below average at all three outfield positions, three years after those metrics qualified him as excellent during his career season.

Put Ceddanne Rafaela or Duran on the left side and they’ll make that play. Of course, you don’t put a quality defender on a short left fielder at Fenway Park…you put an O’Neill, or worse.

That’s forgivable, given that his two home runs Saturday were a big part of the reason the Red Sox still had a chance in this roller coaster. Another litany of squandered leads: 5-4, 6-5 and 8-6, after he blew it in the seventh inning of Friday’s victory.

We could also analyze Rafaela getting caught distracting outside third base in the second inning Saturday, costing Boston a run. The Sox hit back-to-back home runs off Carlos Rodón in the fourth inning Sunday, getting a triple from Rafael Devers with no outs… and left him there. Three more errors Sunday, and two more unearned runs.

“A win is a win,” Aaron Judge told reporters Saturday night, in the midst of another monstrous weekend (6 for 11, 2 HR, 7 RBI), “just like a loss is a loss.”

The Red Sox, the best team in baseball for a month before the All-Star break, are 2-7 since then. A year after going 56-48 in the shadow of the trade deadline, they are 55-49. Last year’s team didn’t have a 21-9 run, but had streaks of eight, six, five and five wins in this stretch last year.

“I don’t think a nine-game stretch defines who we are,” Cora told reporters Sunday night.

Maybe 30, either. These are just snapshots, and a six-month regular season is full of them. This weekend alone:

— The American League-best Guardians won two of three games against the MLB-best Phillies, a potential preview of a World Series where the best teams could play for the stakes.

— The East-leading Orioles have lost two of three games to the Padres in a deadline-day buyers’ battle.

— The Blue Jays are sellers, but they swept the Rangers, who are trying to decide where they stand.

— The Mariners got the better of the White Sox as they headed to Boston.

— The Giants, who were considering selling after a big-spending winter, swept the Rockies in four games. They’re still below .500, but 3.5 games out of the National League wild cards. Where do they go? What do they do?

The easy answer, frankly, is to sell. As we discussed Friday, six wild cards between the two leagues essentially means a perpetual seller’s market. The proof is in the trade thread: two major low-level prospects from the Phillies for Miami closer Carlos Estévez, because they’re going all-in. (Hey, Dave Dombrowski!) Three players, including San Diego’s former top pitching prospect, for Tampa reliever Jason Adam.

We know what the Red Sox need: a bullpen, left-handed hitters, a starting pitcher. It’s clear what it’s going to cost: a lot.

So now what happens?

The Red Sox have made it difficult by winning a litany of games like the two they just lost. Saturday’s, against a Yankees team that has found a way to lose repeatedly over the last six weeks, and Sunday’s, with a series on the line and ace Tanner Houck on the mound.

The Red Sox were 10-3 heading into Sunday’s playoff series — the third of a three-game series tied 1-1. They had won six straight starting with that home series between the Phillies and Yankees, using those playoff games to win each of the last three series before the break.

Then came the grand slam against the Dodgers, games played but lost. The series against the Rockies, with an overtime blown in the first game and a rout in the last. And now what could have been a third set victory against the Yankees in six weeks has slipped through their fingers.

The problem here, of course, is that what defines teams is itself only a snapshot. A month of baseball, the seventh of a season, for which the barrier to entry is not as high as it once was.

James Paxton is a cheap pick, the peripherals are worse than last year, but maybe scoutable against good teams. Danny Jansen is similar at catcher, a free agent in the making and a valued teammate whose once-powerful bat could play at Fenway — and will free up Connor Wong more than Reese McGuire did.

It’s something. It’s not enough.

“There’s a good chance one day we’ll look back and say, ‘That was a trade that happened,’” The Athletic’s Zack Meisel joked of the Jansen deal.

The Sox-Yankees game felt like a Sox-Yankees game, which is always a pleasure. There is life in this group, life that was missing a year ago, even if the record is similar. There are things to appreciate.

But there are also things that suggest, “Maybe not this group. Maybe not again.” Maybe if recent history hadn’t been so bleak here, baseball operations would have already made the choice to think about next year.

I don’t think so. And what happens between now and Tuesday? It looks a little bit like that ball thrown by Trent Grisham’s bat, hanging in the air, with Tyler O’Neill heading toward it.

We felt like we knew what to expect and that the ending was going to be happy.

Maybe not so much. It’s not easy, as they say.