Where Did the Bats Go? Inconsistency Strikes Again!

(AP Photo/Steven Senne)

And there it is.

Just when I was starting to think we had moved beyond this part of the season, the Red Sox went ahead and reminded all of us exactly who they are.

Or, maybe more accurately, who they've been all year.

Inconsistent.

A little more than a week ago, it felt like the question had changed. We weren't wondering whether this team was actually any good anymore. They had won 15 in a row, followed it with another nine-game winning streak not long after that, and somehow managed to turn a season that once seemed destined for disappointment into one where October baseball felt almost expected.

I bought in. Finally.

Apparently the Red Sox took that as a challenge.

Boston finished Sunday with an 8-3 loss in Pittsburgh, losing two of three to the Pirates and falling to 66-58. More concerning, they've now lost seven of their last 10 games.

So here we are again.

What happened?

And maybe the bigger question: Where did the hitting go?

This is basically the same lineup — injuries aside — that has shown the ability to put runs on the board in bunches. On August 4, they scored 14 against the White Sox. Fourteen! That's not ancient history. It was less than two weeks ago.

Then came another one of those stretches where every at-bat suddenly feels like work.

The five-game losing streak that began with the final two games against the A's and continued into Toronto was particularly frustrating. The Sox scored three, three, one, three and four runs in those games. Fourteen runs total in five losses. Not completely lifeless, but certainly not enough — and, more importantly, never enough at the right time.

That's the part that's driving me crazy.

It's not always that they can't hit.

It's that they can't seem to hit when they need to hit.

There's a difference.

We've seen this movie already.

For long stretches of 2026, the Red Sox offense has looked like it can compete with almost anyone. They create traffic. They have power. They have speed. They have players capable of changing a game with one swing.

Wilyer Abreu has been one of the constants. Saturday night in Pittsburgh was another example. He homered, doubled twice and supplied most of the offense until Boston finally added three insurance runs in the ninth of a 4-0 win.

And then Sunday?

Three runs.

All three came on one Connor Wong home run in the fifth inning after Pittsburgh had already gone ahead 7-0. That was pretty much it.

That's not exactly a sustained offensive attack.

It feels like Boston has gone from having innings where everybody hits to waiting around for somebody — anybody — to do something.

Abreu gets a big hit.

Jarren Duran gets one.

Ceddanne Rafaela runs into a home run.

Maybe somebody at the bottom of the lineup delivers.

But those long sequences we saw during the winning streaks? Single, walk, double, sacrifice fly, another single, pressure on the pitcher, runners moving, Fenway going crazy?

They've become much harder to find.

And that's how a lineup goes from dangerous to frustrating really fast.

That's what makes the whole thing difficult to figure out.

Boston isn't sitting here in mid-August buried under a terrible run differential with no evidence that it can score. Quite the opposite.

Even after Sunday's loss, the Red Sox have scored 549 runs while allowing 468. That's a plus-81 run differential, one that actually suggests their 66-58 record could be better than it is.

Think about that.

The numbers say this should be a pretty good baseball team.

Watching them over the last week occasionally suggests otherwise.

And maybe that's the entire Red Sox season in two sentences.

When they're good, they look REALLY good.

When they're bad, you wonder how they ever won 15 consecutive games in the first place.

We've spent months trying to decide which version is real.

I'm beginning to think the answer is both.

This team is capable of going on another extended winning streak. I absolutely believe that now. We've seen it happen more than once.

I also wouldn't be shocked if they lost five of six.

We've seen that too.

There's also the reality that the lineup isn't whole.

Masataka Yoshida went on the injured list Sunday with a hamstring injury suffered while running out a double Saturday night. He's hitting .274 this season, and while Yoshida hasn't necessarily carried this offense, losing another reliable professional hitter doesn't exactly help when you're already struggling to manufacture runs.

Trevor Story, meanwhile, has begun a rehab assignment with Worcester after missing 41 games because of a sports hernia injury.

Getting Story back could matter.

A lot.

Not because I expect him to arrive and suddenly fix everything, but because this lineup desperately needs length. It needs fewer stretches where opposing pitchers can navigate four or five hitters without feeling much pressure.

The Sox don't need one guy to hit .400 for six weeks.

They need six or seven guys contributing at the same time.

That's what made those winning streaks possible.

It wasn't one superstar dragging everybody else along. It was an offense that kept coming at you.

Somewhere along the way, that disappeared.

Here's the other reason this matters so much.

The pitching is giving this team opportunities.

Sonny Gray was brilliant Saturday, throwing seven shutout innings in the 4-0 win and improving to 15-3.

Ranger Suárez gave Boston five innings of one-run baseball against Toronto on Wednesday.

They lost anyway.

During that 6-4 loss, Boston actually led before Toronto scored five times in the eighth inning, helped along by a Willson Contreras error and a bullpen meltdown.

So no, this isn't ALL about hitting.

Patrick Sandoval getting knocked around for seven runs Sunday certainly wasn't the offense's fault.

But over 162 games, good teams save each other.

The starter gets knocked out early? The offense steals one.

The lineup can't get anything going? The starter wins 2-1.

The bullpen blows a lead? Somebody answers in the ninth.

The Red Sox were doing that.

Lately, they're not.

Here's where I have to stop myself from going completely back to where I was earlier this season.

Because despite all of this — the five-game losing streak, the disappearing offense, the Pittsburgh series, the general aggravation — the Red Sox are still sitting in the second American League Wild Card position.

At 66-58, they're five games clear of the current playoff cutoff.

Five games.

On August 16.

I'd have taken that without hesitation a couple of months ago.

So this isn't time to panic.

But it is time to get going again.

The Sox return to Fenway Monday to face Arizona, and the schedule isn't going to stop and politely wait for the offense to rediscover itself. There are only 38 games remaining.

That's not a ton.

And after everything that happened this summer, it would be incredibly disappointing to watch this team fight all the way back, rip off those crazy winning streaks, make believers out of people like me...

...only to spend September hanging onto a playoff spot because everybody suddenly forgot how to hit.

Maybe this is nothing more than another valley in a season filled with peaks and valleys.

Actually, that's probably exactly what it is.

But the valleys matter more now.

You could shrug off a bad week in May. You could talk yourself through a losing streak in June. There was plenty of baseball left.

August is different.

September will be even more different.

At this point, you're not trying to figure out what kind of team you have anymore.

You're trying to get into October.

The Red Sox have done the hard part. They've put themselves in position.

Now somebody needs to wake up the bats.

Because after spending the better part of four months wondering whether this team was worth believing in, I really don't feel like changing my mind again.

Written by: Tim Hourihan

If you're interested in being notified when the next article comes out, be sure to scroll down to the "Free Subscription" form and subscribe, we hope you enjoyed!