The Boston Red Sox, as I write this, are in position to make history. Having incredibly lost their first six games of the season, they can become the first team in the division era of Major League Baseball to lose its first seven games and still reach the playoffs.
So can the Tampa Bay Rays because they, too, lost their first six games. The Red Sox, though, are more likely to attain that status because they supposedly have the better team.
Interestingly, at the rate both teams have begun the season, they could wind up battling each other for the American League wild-card spot in the playoffs.
But the 0-6 start the Red Sox have mounted prompts a question: why?
After fortifying their offense with the acquisition of Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez and adding Bobby Jenks as a second closer in the bullpen, the Red Sox were considered the favorite for not only the A.L. East title but also for the A.L. pennant.
Before going any farther, I should explain the math the Red Sox have raised with their start.
This is not an exercise in new math or new-age statistics. There is no WAR here or VORP or UZR. It is simple statistics, trying to use the past as an indication of the future. It won’t prove anything, but it will challenge Red Sox fans, who have started the season not in the state of Massachusetts but in a state of shock.
By the time this sees the light of cyberspace, the Red Sox might have won a game, but at the time it is being written they have not. They were one of three teams that lost their first five games, but Houston won and then there were two, the Red Sox and the Rays.
Since the inception of division play in 1969 through last season, teams started the season 0-5 or worse 46 times, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Only two of those teams made the playoffs, the 1974 Pittsburgh Pirates and the 1995 Cincinnati Reds.
Through my own research, I learned that the ’74 Pirates and the ’95 Reds each lost a sixth game before finally winning the seventh. That means that no team that has lost its first seven games has made the playoffs, opening an unexpected path to history for the Red Sox.
Under the current ownership of John Henry and friends, the Red Sox have made their mission maintaining parity with the Yankees at the minimum. Their aggressive and expensive pursuit of Crawford (5 years, $142 million) and Gonzalez (soon to sign a contract reported to be 7 years, $154 million) was done in the Yankees’ most expensive image.
But for the team to begin the season with six losses in six games, something might have been lacking in the planning of the general manager, Theo Epstein, who was dubbed the boy genius when the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series after an 86-year drought.
Red Sox fans have been stunned into silence. I would love to hear from the high-paid New York lawyer who always used to register complaints about my criticism of the Red Sox. He became so distraught over it that he vowed never to read another of my Red Sox columns, only to write another e-mail after my next Red Sox column.
“I thought you weren’t going to read any more columns,” I responded to his e-mail. “I couldn’t resist it,” he replied.
Six games obviously do not a season make. Even a six-game deficit with 156 games and 25 weeks to play leaves an awful lot of time for a team to overcome.
Are the Red Sox good enough to overcome the deficit? Well, they were good enough only a week earlier to be picked to win the division and league championships, and they haven’t lost any front-line pitchers or critical hitters to injuries.
Can the unusual losing streak have a psychological effect on the players? Will they feel pressure to win two games in a day or three games in two days to catch up before too much time has elapsed?
The Red Sox are too veteran a team and manager Terry Francona too experienced to panic at this early stage or any stage of the season. Their task will be to determine what went wrong in the first week and what to do about it.
Basically the Red Sox hitters needed to produce more runs. They scored five runs in each of the first two games against Texas but then scored a total of six runs in the next four games, including one in each of two games and none in the sixth game that Cleveland won with an eighth-inning suicide squeeze.
That the Rays matched Boston’s six losses in the first six games benefited the Red Sox because Tampa Bay is one less division and wild-card rival they have to catch.
What is the difference between a season-starting losing streak and winning streak? Elias said that since 1969 35 teams have begun the season with 5-0 records, and 15 have gone on to make the playoffs. Most recent was the 2006 Detroit Tigers.
On the same day this season that the Red Sox and the Rays each sank to 0-6, two other teams ended season-opening 5-game streaks. Houston (0-5) scored a run in the ninth inning and edged Cincinnati (5-0), 3-2.