In falling to O's on Opening Day, Boston looks like same old Red Sox — and that's not good

BOSTON — Let’s not read too much into Opening Day, right?

That has to be the sentiment if you’re a Red Sox fan. Boston suffered defeats in 2004, 2007 and 2018 — those seasons ended with World Series championships.

This being a passionate basketball market for six generations, there will be more than a few folks who would like to offer a counterargument. And you couldn’t exactly blame them after this chilly Thursday afternoon at Fenway Park, a sloppy 10-9 defeat against the Orioles.

The offense put forth a battling effort. Alex Verdugo, Rafael Devers, Justin Turner and Masataka Yoshida — in his Red Sox debut after winning a World Baseball Classic crown with Japan — all notched a pair of hits. Adam Duvall struck out as the potential winning run in the bottom of the ninth. Boston was on the cusp of a comeback despite facing deficits of 5-1, 8-2 and 10-4.

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That’s where the positives end. The Red Sox showed more of the same from the 2020 and 2022 editions, and both of those teams finished in last place in the American League East. Boston was short on quality pitching, and the culprits on this sun-splashed day all carried significant questions with them into this 2023 campaign.

“We’ve got to do a better job,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “All-around it wasn’t a great game. We were one swing away from winning this, but overall there was a lot of stuff we did today that we didn’t do in spring training.”

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Corey Kluber put the Red Sox behind from the start. Known for his command throughout the majority of his career, the veteran nibbled his way to four walks in 3⅓ innings and absorbed the defeat. Kluber was tagged for five earned runs and allowed a pair of homers in his brief stint.

“I’d rather them beat me by earning it,” Kluber said. “I was handing out free passes. I did that more than I would have liked today.”

Kluber topped out at 88.4 mph on his 26 sinkers — in a modern game built on velocity, he’s attempting to survive on guile. He’s posted a 4.36 earned-run average since the beginning of the 2019 season while battling a string of injuries. Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom is hoping to hit on another lottery ticket off the open market — it was nothing but disappointment on this occasion.

“I’m not worried about Corey throwing strikes,” Cora said. “He’ll be fine.”

Cora helped steer Boston to its most recent title five years ago by following some advice from his old manager, Terry Francona — resist the urge to chase wins. He put together what felt like an A list and a B list of relievers throughout that charmed season, deploying the top options while ahead and eating innings with the rest while trailing.

That’s how we arrived at Zack Kelly, Ryan Brasier and Kaleb Ort allowing Baltimore to spread out its lead. Kelly spiked his first pitch into the dirt to score a run and walked home another in the bottom of the fourth. Brasier and Ort gave up six hits and five earned runs in their three combined innings.

“Too many walks,” Cora said. “A lot of traffic. We’ve got to be better than that.”

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Brasier is one of the last survivors from that 119-win juggernaut — he's outlasted Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts and David Price, to name a few. Bloom was willing to overlook his 5.78 earned-run average a season ago in favor of some peripheral metrics — a chase rate in the 91st percentile, a walk rate in the 89th percentile. Ort was retained despite his 6.35 ERA in part thanks to his 96.3 mph average on his four-seam fastball — that was in the 88th percentile.

Is there a point where performance matters? Where actually contributing to wins on the field eclipses being valued for nebulous upside? Kluber, Brasier and Ort are all on the wrong side of 31 — Kelly is 28 and was undrafted out of Newberry College (S.C.) in 2017. None of the four can be considered an elite prospect at this point.

Bloom is still content to be risk-averse, allow an average farm system to develop at its own pace and approach a fourth season in charge much like he conducted his first. He helped orchestrate a gutsy run to the A.L. Championship Series in 2021 — the region grasped onto the parallels between that and the surprise World Series champions in 2013. The annual case to believe in Bloom is largely rooted in those two extraordinary seasons and not in the star-studded rosters that fueled success in other years.

Award-winning director James Cameron, among others, is credited for observing that hope is not a strategy. And even though that emotion springs eternal at the outset of every baseball season, cold reality usually follows in short order. It certainly hit home on this occasion for Boston — will this be the exception or the rule for the next six months?

bkoch@providencejournal.com  

On Twitter: @BillKoch25 

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Red Sox resemble last year's team — all hitting, no pitching — in loss