Red Sox’s trip ‘sucked’ and that should be enough for 2024 | Smith

NEW YORK — The 2024 Red Sox were at times a fun and exciting team. They were often a resilient team (28 wins after returning). They were a young team that stayed in the playoff race despite a flawed roster.

Now they are a dead team.

“We’re a .500 team,” manager Alex Cora said. “We’re playing .500 baseball. I don’t think that’s good enough. We’ve got to be better. We’re playing .500 right now.”

It looks like it’s all over for the 2024 Red Sox, who are .500 (70-70) for the first time since June 14 (35-35). This brutal 1-5 road trip — after a brutal 2-6 home series — makes a 5 1/2-game deficit in the AL Wild Card standings with 22 games remaining seem insurmountable.

“It sucked, man,” Cora said of the trip, which ended Wednesday with an 8-3 loss to the Mets here at Citi Field. “It was tough. I think we went to Detroit 2 1/2 games back or 3 1/2 games back, and now we’re 5 1/2 (games back). We’re playing .500. Like I said, we’re just an average team right now. So you’ve got to show up Friday and try to be better. It’s a huge home series, this one coming up.”

Boston hosts the 109-loss White Sox in three games at Fenway Park, starting Friday. Will a win get them back in contention?

It’s hard to see the upcoming home stretch (three games with Chicago, three games with Baltimore) as a big one given the small number of games remaining and the way the Red Sox have played since the All-Star break.

Boston is 17-27 with a negative 46-point second-half differential. It’s hard to believe this team — which scored three runs in the eighth Wednesday after entering the inning trailing by just one — has the wherewithal to make up so much in such a short time. The Red Sox are struggling right now. They have scored just eight runs in their last 45 innings. They have the second-worst ERA (5.39) among major league teams in the second half. They have committed 102 errors, the most of any major league team this season.

But Cora — who stressed his team was “running out of time” after the first game of the series in New York — doesn’t think the deficit in the standings is too big to overcome.

“That’s not much,” Cora said. “But we’re playing .500 baseball.”

During the postgame session, Cora referred to the Red Sox as a .500 team seven times.

“We’re playing .500 baseball,” Cora said. “Speaking of the Royals, the Twins and everybody else, it doesn’t matter. We’re playing .500 baseball.”

Closer Kenley Jansen, who recorded one walk and gave up four runs in the eighth inning, also said he thought he still had time.

“We just have to fight,” Jansen said. “It ain’t over until it’s over. So I think Minnesota lost. So we just have to fight, man. We’ve got three games with the White Sox. We just have to start from there.”

The Tigers are winning now in San Diego. If Detroit wins, they will pass Boston for fourth place in the Wild Card standings.

“It’s difficult. Definitely difficult. That’s not how we want to play,” Jansen said.

The players gave the fans a pretty good season after taking over ownership, and management did little in the offseason to improve the roster. But pretty good seasons without a playoff berth shouldn’t be acceptable in Boston. And for the third straight year, the Red Sox won’t miss the postseason. That should be a lesson to owners when free agency begins.