For nearly the entire first half of the season, I felt sorry for the Red Sox. The American League East was having a party and didn’t invite the Red Sox. Then, as the All-Star break approached, the Red Sox grew tired of being snubbed, felt cheated and tried to crash the party.

They appeared to get a foot in the door, but the party bouncer stepped in, blocked their way and tossed them out on their ear. The Yankees won two games of their three-game series and dealt the Red Sox a serious setback.

The outcome of that series was reminiscent of the series the teams played the first three days of May. The Yankees won all three games of that series and dropped the Red Sox record under .500, where it has stayed ever since.

With the A.L. East a forgiving division, the Red Sox refused to go away. They won 12 of 18 games in the three weeks before they played the Yankees earlier this month and slashed the Yankees’ lead over them from 9 games to 5 ½. A sweep of the Yankees’ series would have their fiercest rivals feeling Red Sox heat on their necks.

Alas, the Yankees won two of three, sending the Red Sox into the All-Star break 6 ½ back. The All-Star rest did the Red Sox no good. When they resumed the season, having possessed last place for six weeks, they lost all four games of a series in Anaheim, suffering two successive shutouts and scoring a total of four runs in the series.

They proceeded to lose the opener of a series in Houston and for the first time this year fell 10 games from first. After losing their sixth consecutive game they now sit 11 games out of first place.

With the non-waiver trading deadline rapidly approaching, the guys on the field have created a predicament for the guys in the front office. Are the Red Sox in the playoff race, or should they accept the reality of a lost season and begin making plans for next season?

“The decision will be made all over baseball because of the competitive races,” Larry Lucchino, the Red Sox president and chief executive officer, said from Boston Tuesday. “Most of the teams will be sitting down in a week to 9, 10 days making that decision.

“The plan is always about having two lenses in your glasses, a short term and a long term. You need a year-round perspective when you’re working in baseball. You also try to get to when you’re on the cusp and go either way depending on the latest performance. You make that decision as late as possible.”

But, Lucchino added, “You can’t wait too long. “You have to have a decision ready.”

The Red Sox have had plenty of experience with the July 31 trading deadline. On that date in 2004, for example, Boston obtained half an infield, first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz and shortstop Orlando Cabrera in a four-team trade. Without them, the general belief was, the Red Sox would not have reached and won their first World Series in 86 years because Mientkiewicz and Cabrera shored up the team’s porous infield defense.

It’s not likely that trade-deadline trades could catapult Boston into the playoffs this year. On July 31, 2004, the Red Sox were in second place 8 ½ games from first and went on to win the A.L. wild card.

What will the Red Sox seek if they decide to enhance their post-season chances with trades?

“Baseball ops will decide,” Lucchino said.

The head of baseball operations, general manager Ben Cherington, did not return a telephone call to discuss the possibilities, not that he would have had he called.

Lucchino, however, offered one hint. “It’s no secret,” he said. “Pitching, pitching, pitching — that’s always your first choice. If you can’t find that, you look for someone who can perform for more than a nanosecond.”

If the Red Sox decide they are or can be contenders, whatever or whomever they should happen to acquire would face the same peril the team’s off-season signing have encountered. The Red Sox seem to have guessed wrong on one acquisition after another.

On the same day, last Nov. 25, they signed free agents Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval for a total of $183 million. Two weeks later they traded for Rick Porcello, whom they signed to a one-year contract for $12.5 million, then gave him a 4-year extension for $82.5 million.

Ramirez, a career .300 hitter, led the team in runs batted in with 46 (one more than three others) through Wednesday but was hitting .262. Sandoval was hitting .263, including .049 as a right-handed batter. Porcello, whom they expected to lead the pitching staff, was leading it but in losses with a 5-10 record and 5.79 earned run average.

Then there is Mike Napoli, whom the Red Sox had retained as a free agent a year earlier with a 2-year, $32 million contract. He was hitting a lusty .197.

This is how a team squanders a $187 million payroll, third highest in the majors.

“We’ve had a couple of veterans who were expected to perform at a certain level and haven’t,” Lucchino said. “We’ve also had a couple veterans who weren’t expected to perform well do well.”

Whomever Lucchino had in mind for the latter group can’t be found on the pitching staff. It’s the league’s worst with a 4.50 e.r.a., and no one who has started more than 10 games has a winning record. But then, the Red Sox as a team haven’t had a winning record since May 1.

Meanwhile, the New York Yankees, Boston’s legendary rival, has burst out of what seemed like a four-team race and is threatening to dominate the division.

“I don’t know why the media didn’t think at the beginning of the season why they weren’t going to be good,” Lucchino said of the team he once famously dubbed the Evil Empire. “That bullpen is formidable. So is the lineup.”

The Yankees were underrated primarily because no one knew if Alex Rodriguez would contribute offensive production following his involuntary year off and if Mark Teixeira would bounce back from another injury-interrupted season in which he hit .216.

The Red Sox, meanwhile, were viewed as a playoff contender. This is what I love about the absurd projections that the computer kooks crank out. I was curious about what their projected win total was for the Red Sox, but I couldn’t allow myself to find out.

Instead I asked my colleague Zach Kram to find what he could. He has demonstrated a friendlier feel for these things than I have.

He reported two pre-season projections:

FanGraphs said 87 wins with a 63 percent chance of making the playoffs through either the wild card or division title (with a 45 percent chance of winning the division, while nobody else in the AL East was even at 20 percent).

Baseball Prospectus said the Red Sox had a 55 percent chance of making the playoffs either through the wild card or division title.

For comparison, FanGraphs now says the Red Sox are projected to win 78 games with just an 8 percent chance of making the playoffs (2 percent for the division title), while Baseball Prospectus says they have just a 4 percent chance.

I have never made a study of the accuracy of such projections and I’m not about to now. But given the way I feel about the idea, I appreciate that the Red Sox have helped expose them as absurd and not worth anyone’s time or attention.