Good thing the Red Sox have 91 games to play. They have plenty of time to correct what they learned from the first 71.
The most important lesson of all? They need to run on all cylinders if they hope to go very far.
Pitching well is all fine and dandy. So is hitting well. And fielding well. But if the Sox expect to reach the postseason -- and go deeper than they did last year -- they need to start doing all three well. And they need to do it consistently.
In finding a way to lose yesterday for the fourth time in five games, the Sox reminded themselves how much they have been plagued this year by inconsistency.
"Every time we think we're ready to get on a little bit of a roll, we don't put it together," manager Terry Francona said after the Sox bowed to the Twins, 4-3, in 10 innings before the 100th straight sellout crowd at Fenway Park. "There have been a lot of games where we've bailed ourselves out because we continued to play, but we just need to put it all together at the same time."
In the microanalysis that inevitably follows every loss, the fault often falls on a particular player. When the Sox dropped the final two games last weekend in San Francisco, Alan Embree and Mike Timlin were blamed for misplaced pitches in crucial situations. And the first inclination yesterday may have been to lay the loss at Nomar Garciaparra's doorstep since his error leading off the 10th inning cleared the way for Minnesota's winning run.
But when a team with postseason ambitions goes 11-14 late in the spring and early summer, as the Sox have, there's plenty of blame to go around. The Sox lost a third straight series for the first time since they dropped four straight from Sept. 21-Oct. 3, 2001.
"We haven't been that good in the last month," Johnny Damon said. "Everyone's under a microscope right now until we go out there and start winning games."
The Sox have averaged only 2.25 runs a game over their last four losses, which explains as much, if not more, than the individual lapses of Embree, Timlin, or Garciaparra. And all the runs they scored yesterday were produced by a single batter, David Ortiz, who launched a solo homer in the first inning off Brad Radke and laced a two-sun single in the seventh off reliever Aaron Fultz.
Turning things around will require "getting the big hits and not relying on Ortiz getting all the RBIs out there," said Damon, who scored the tying run on Ortiz's single. Kevin Youkilis and Damon each singled to help chase Radke and set up Ortiz's tying hit.
