The Red Sox passed the quarter pole mark of the 2015 marathon, and the results haven't been pretty. You don't need a Ph.D. in baseball to recognize mediocrity and the Red Sox haven't quite met that metric.
John Farrell's extension came as a cruel joke to Red Sox fans, and Farrell's 2013 championship may show up in a redo of Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers". The chapter might be called, "10,000 Years" instead of "10,000 Hours" as it may take the Sox a hundred centuries to win another championship with "John Wayne" Farrell.
The "Five Aces" pitching staff hasn't been Five Arces, but overall the rotation has disappointed even fans of 'average'. Recently, Rick Porcello's performance make Whitey Bulger look like Mother Teresa as far as grand theft goes, Clay Buchholz remains an enigma, and the Cardinals' wise exile of Joe Kelly looks even better this season. Wade Miley has turned around his initial woes and maybe Triple A promotions Steven Wright and Eduardo Rodriguez can reshuffle the deck.
The only way a Red Sox position player makes the All-Star team is via a "Lifetime Achievement" award. David Ortiz needs a trip to the Fountain of Youth and steady Dustin Pedroia hasn't outperformed Jason Kipnis or Jose Altuve. He has surpassed the surprising decline of Robinson Cano and Stephen Drew has proven the past couple of years of failure wasn't a fluke.
The good news for Red Sox fans is what? Fans of younger players can watch the struggles of Bogaerts and Betts, the efforts of sparkplug Brock Holt, and hope the offense can 'mean revert' to competence after an indifferent first quarter. Eleventh (of fifteen) in runs scored and fourteenth in ERA converges with the Sox' last place standing in the AL East.
What's even worse is that Sox for the most part have played boring baseball. When lifelong baseball fans watch the NBA playoffs every night and sitcom reruns instead of the locals, baseball has to examine more than the length of games.
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