Red Sox are better than the Orioles series made them look, but not by much

COMMENTARY

Bad teams find ways to lose games.

It’s an old baseball truism, right up there with “you can never have too much pitching,” “you need to be strong up the middle,” and “Red Sox season-ticket holders and past ticket buyers have been receiving a flurry of emails this spring from the ball club announcing discount offerings.”

Suffice to say, the return to Fenway Park did not go well. The return to American League East play didn’t either. Let us count the ways.

On Tuesday, the Opening Day pregame swallowed up by the Trevor Story and Nick Pivetta losses, was a defensive disaster, with Jarren Duran’s straight miss in the left-field corner the flashpoint in three unearned runs.

On Wednesday, an early five-run lead disappeared largely in the hands of Chris Martin, last season’s bullpen stalwart because he didn’t give up the walks, wild pitches, and home runs he packed into the seventh.

And then Thursday. Nursing a 2-1 lead in the eighth, Ceddanne Rafaela — a center fielder needed in the infield — and David Hamilton — a minor-league shortstop playing his 19th MLB game — appeared to turn an inning-ending double play, but Hamilton missed tagging the second-base bag.

That Greg Weissert’s next pitch was deposited in the first row by the Pesky Pole was country-music perfect. As was Baltimore’s six-run 10th a reminder of another truism, the one about water usually finding its level.

“I like the way we fought,” manager Alex Cora told reporters, and that’s entirely fair.

In a normal April, I’d probably feel a little differently about it, not least of which because he’s right. Connor Wong did get the game to extras with a two-strike, pinch-hit shot onto Lansdowne Street.

The starters were excellent all series — five innings all, with Brayan Bello getting an extra out, and two earned runs allowed combined. Duran, in the same game as his gaffe, made a heads-up throw to third that cut down a run. There are, as we expected, glimmers of something in all of whatever this is.

As previously noted, it’ll get the sickos through. Everyone else? Our winter diversions have started leaving the stage — kills me as a Terrier, but make time to watch BC men’s hockey on Saturday, because they’re something special.

The best player on our spring and summer companion, Rafael Devers, is already battling a shoulder problem and already multiple defensive runs saved and outs above average in the red. Sixteen unearned runs in 13 games, with 13 just in the six games without Story.

Cue that cliche up the top there. Or the one about talent making its own luck.

The forgotten truth in what the Red Sox did this winter was that it could surprise in both directions. They did not build a 2024 team designed to win 100 games, but they didn’t build one to lose 100, either. This was a fingers-crossed-for-the-future bunch, a fringe contender build for Rob Manfred’s mediocrity-celebrating version of the game.

With veterans Devers and Story, plus Triston Casas, they’d hit enough given 81 games at Fenway. With Lucas Giolito, Pivetta, and a cadre of promising young arms, they’d pitch deep enough to support a solid bullpen. They’d play for Cora, who is too ultra competitive to ever embrace the sort of 2017-21 ugly stuff that helped get Baltimore where it now is.

About that.

Story’s gone for the year, and Devers heading to the injured list feels inevitable. (“I think like two or three days [off] could be enough,” he told reporters after Thursday’s loss.) The rotation lost about 170 innings when Giolito went down, and Pivetta’s flexor strain . . . it’s mild, we’re told, but his durability took on a greater value post-Giolito. It’s already threatened, and that threat comes after a spring where he admittedly worked like a maniac.