Let’s simplify this a bit: it’s just been one bad month. I know, losing sucks. I get it. The Red Sox have been immensely frustrating to watch, it’s true. But let’s ease off on heating up Farrell’s seat. The manager isn’t the common denominator to this team’s failings, even if he hasn’t made the right choices here and there. He doesn’t need to be fired, nor will he be, logic willing.

The Red Sox, at 81 games in, were 44-37. Maybe we expected more after a ridiculous first couple months, but that’s still very good. Great, even, if you’re one with low expectations. So let’s say the Red Sox stay on this course and finish at 88-74. Would you hate that? Probably not! That’s competing for a playoff berth, and that record gives them an outside shot to win the AL East. Three teams with that record or worse made the playoffs last season, and they were all American League teams. It’s not like Farrell has substantially deviated the team from the postseason track they were on. They’re still right in the thick of it! They’re just not above the chaos, that’s all.

Farrell isn’t to blame for slumps and BABIP regressions. I don’t think he could’ve instantly made Hanley’s mid-June power outage end overnight, nor is he responsible for Pedroia not hitting a single home run all month. Shaw was getting exploited pretty badly over the last month by pitchers both right- and left-handed, and is that on the manager? No, or at least, not entirely. The coaches can only help them along. The players have to come through. They have to be the ones to adjust at the plate. For what it’s worth, they probably weren’t going to keep up a historic pace of run-scoring anyway. Probably.

Farrell can’t control how terrible the Red Sox’s in-house starter options are, only which ones he can possibly use.

The one thing Farrell can take some blame for is the pitching, or at least how he manages the pitchers. But even then, it’s difficult to decipher obvious bad moves from calls that simply look bad in hindsight. He can’t control how terrible the Red Sox’s in-house starter options are, only which ones he can possibly use. Clay Buchholz becoming the world’s newest pumpkin? Not his fault. Henry Owens walking his first 40 batters, you, your mother, and half your cousins? Not Farrell’s fault. He rightfully gets flak for certain aspects of his bullpen management, since he’s tended to ride Junichi Tazawa and Koji Uehara pretty hard every season. But he’s made good decisions more often than not.

Look at Craig Kimbrel. He is the relief ace of this team. You should be able to rely on him anytime, anywhere. Last night against the Rangers, he was not reliable whatsoever. Even so, that was the right choice! Farrell used his best reliever in a one-run game against a very good team to try and keep it that way. That is the best option in that situation. You can’t ask for much more from your manager.

What I’m trying to say is that firing Farrell right now doesn’t make the team better. He’s been more than acceptable in his time at the helm of the Red Sox. Torey Lovullo would also be great as manager, and I like him as well, but right now, he isn’t manager, and won’t be until otherwise told. As of this moment, John Farrell is the Lord of Harrenhal, and no dragons are coming to burn him out just yet. The team isn’t scuffling because of him, and firing him because the team is 45-38 seems really far-fetched. People want a scapegoat for a 28-game span in June. There doesn’t have to be one.

If the Red Sox really felt like firing someone to make it look like they’re taking action, the first one to go would be the pitching coach, Carl Willis. The pitching has been the worst part of the team, and giving him a pink slip would make it look like they’re doing something about it. They haven’t gone with that superficial approach just yet, as they’re getting Brian Bannister to try and assist him. It’s a solid plan to be sure, but one can only assume that Willis might already be on thin ice.

The team is still winning, despite what the reactions you see every game would lead you to believe. It took a historic September collapse to oust Terry Francona (and the team still went 90-72!). The Red Sox endured six months of ineptitude and chronic mismanagement before Bobby Valentine was sent packing. John Farrell has done nothing on that scale to deserve it. 2014 and 2015 were generally bad, yes, but both seem far worse with high expectations than without.

If common sense persists, the Red Sox will not fire Farrell anytime soon. 30 days of bad baseball in the middle of a season, though it seems long, isn’t something that should determine his job over. Should the Red Sox have a few more months where they go 10-18, the pitchers can’t stop giving up homers, and the hitters sputter worse than a badly-tuned car, then yeah, the front office will reconsider. But for now, John Farrell’s job should be safe, and firing him would do a lot more harm than good.

Photo by Troy Taormina/USA Today Sports Images

Going Deep

Through Sunday’s games the Red Sox had used their bullpen for 131.0 innings pitched, a mark that ranked third in the game behind only the Rangers (134.2) and Rays (133.0). This usage level is a by-product of the poor performances the team got from the starting rotation through the first ~40 games of the season. The relievers have done a reasonable job despite the high workload, posting a 3.71 ERA (ranked 17^th), although their 4.57 FIP (ranked 29^th) foretells some underlying issues. Over at FanGraphs, Craig Edwards wrote about bullpen usage with some specific attention given to the Red Sox. If the Red Sox starters do not start performing better and going deeper into games, which to be fair they have over the last eight games, the stress on the bullpen will begin to be too much and reliever performance could slip. This could mean that the Sox will need to realign or retool their pen to keep fresh arms in the mix. While there has been no indication of an impending change to the rotation, they could move a current rotation arm like Justin Masterson or Joe Kelly (more on him below) out to the bullpen, promote another one of the arms at Pawtucket to the big league club, or some combination of the two. Either way, this is something that needs to be monitored.

While the Red Sox‘s pitching has improved dramatically of late, the offense has yet to live up to expectations. On the season, they own a .262 TAv (ranked 22^nd in baseball), an 85 wRC+ (ranked 25^th) and are scoring just 3.97 runs per game (ranked 20^th). These numbers provide a simplistic look at the general ineptitude of Red Sox batters, but Baseball Prospectus’ Matthew Trueblood dug deeper and suggested that a too-patient approach and ugly times through the order splits are the primary problems. BP Boston’s own Matthew Kory dug even deeper in an article over at FanGraphs this week, and reminded us that the patient approach of the Red Sox is still a good thing as it leads to batters getting on base. The problem with the Sox offense, as Kory sees it, is that as the batted ball data show, the Red Sox have not been hitting the ball hard often enough to warrant success (27.0% hard, 21.9% soft, ranked 25^th and 1^st, respectively). The glass-half-full outlook for Red Sox fans is that many of these hitters have a history of success that should impart confidence they will eventually get locked in, and produce a lot of runs.

The witch hunt for players using performance-enhancing drugs continues to be a focus within the office of the commissioner. While the investigation into Biogenesis revealed a number of players using PEDs, it also revealed that they were doing so for a period of time without being caught, to some extent verifying the adage that cheaters will always be a step ahead of the testing. But Buster Olney of ESPN.com suggests that major league baseball could use Statcast data to assess dramatic performance changes for players and consider said changes as a form of evidence of drug use. A sudden increase in a pitcher’s velocity, or a hitter showing a significant increase in bat speed could be taken as a sign that the new performance comes via artificial enhancement. I am always in favor of gathering more objective and good evidence to support claims, and this proposal falls within that sentiment. It at least partly moves this aspect of baseball away from reporters seeing pimples on a guy’s back as enough to produce a guilty verdict. My concern is that we still don’t really know how PED use changes performance, if at all. We have ideas, and Olney suggests the two I gave above, but where are the boundaries in respect to any performance increase that, if broken, will be taken as an example of chemical enhancement? To determine such a thing the league would need to know who was using and when, observe any change in their performance, and establish it as a benchmark to which others are compared. I am not sure it is even possible to obtain something like that in a meaningful sample of players. And even if it were, it is not clear that any given drug has the same impact across players, so the problem is even more difficult. It is a messy situation that needs to be considered carefully.

Quick Hits

Pablo Sandoval’s continued struggles when hitting right-handed (.207 TAv against left-handed pitching), have lead to him getting a few off days over the last few weeks when the Red Sox’s opponent has a left-hander starting. Despite this, Sandoval told Ian Browne of MLB.com that he remains confident in his ability and has not given any thought to abandoning switch-hitting.

The Red Sox pitching staff has performed very well since the hiring of Carl Willis (5.04 ERA pre-Willis, 3.14 ERA with-Willis), although as Willis tells Jason Mastrodonato of the BostonHerald.com the credit should be given to the pitchers who have been better in their execution. While this recent run of success for Red Sox pitching may not be entirely related to the presence of Willis in the dugout, The Boston Globe‘s Alex Speier writes that there is precedent for in-season pitching coach changes leading to improvement in runs allowed numbers for the team.

One of Carl Willis’ primary tasks will be the growth of Joe Kelly, who can no longer rely entirely on Yadier Molina doing his game calling. Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal highlights how Kelly is learning how to best use his fastball and incorporate his secondary pitches in with it. There is no doubt that Kelly has great potential as a starting pitcher, hopefully he and Willis can work to implement it.

Three Good Game Stories

Clay Buchholz threw 8.0 tremendous innings on Friday night, but a Nelson Cruz walk-off single saddled the Red Sox with a 2-1 loss. MassLive.com’s Christopher Smith writes that John Farrell was candid in taking responsibility for the loss, and claiming his decision to pitch to Cruz was ‘terrible’.

After hitting a bomb off of Felix Hernandez in the Red Sox’s 4-2 win over the Mariners on Saturday, David Ortiz spoke with CSNNE.com’s Sean McAdam about his success against King Felix, and how he likes hitting against aces.

WEEI.com’s Ryan Hannable writes that Sunday’s loss to the Mariners was representative of a recent theme for the Red Sox: good pitching and poor hitting against left-handed pitching.

Going Deep

Once the losses started piling up for the Red Sox, change was inevitable. First came the firing of Juan Nieves, then the Sox shipped off Anthony Varvaro and Edward Mujica. On Saturday, they optioned Allen Craig to Triple-A Pawtucket and called up Jackie Bradley Jr. Given the changes that have been made already, the Providence Journal’s Brian MacPherson highlights who the Red Sox’s next casualties could be if the losing continues. The most likely changes will come from the starting rotation, although manager John Farrell said Sunday the team has no immediate plans to shake things up. Justin Masterson didn’t help his case to stay in the rotation Tuesday night, however, after giving up six runs in 2.1 innings in Oakland. Also, as MacPherson points out, Red Sox right fielders sport a sub-.200 slugging percentage. Perhaps Rusney Castillo is on the way. It’s fair to say those making these decisions should be under a close microscope as well.

Craig’s demotion to Triple A along with Joe Kelly’s ineptitude over his last four starts inspired The Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo to reveal a disheartening truth: last summer’s trade deadline deal to send John Lackey to the Cardinals in exchange for Craig and Kelly looks atrocious for the Red Sox so far. When Craig was with the big-league club in 2015, he was used primarily as the fourth or fifth outfielder and hit .135/.237/.192 with a .204 TAv in 59 plate appearances. Kelly, who walked seven batters in the Sox’ loss in Toronto Saturday, has allowed five or more runs in his last four outings, inflating his ERA to 6.35 and his FIP to 4.48. Meanwhile, Lackey boasts a 3.16 FIP and is averaging 6.41 strikeouts and 0.46 home runs per nine innings. It looks even worse when you remember the right-hander is pitching for a major-league minimum $500,000 salary.

Quick Hits

If anyone has benefitted from the Red Sox’s woeful start to May, especially on offense, it’s Jackie Bradley Jr. An ugly rookie season in 2014 and an abundance of outfielders forced Bradley to start 2015 in Triple-A. But after posting a .400 wOBA and .398 BABIP through 24 games in Pawtucket, Bradley was called back up to the majors on Sunday. Now, as The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier writes, Bradley is trying to reassert himself as a viable big leaguer with an improved swing.

The Red Sox hired recent Cleveland Indians Triple-A pitching coach Carl Willis as their next pitching coach on Saturday. MassLive.com’s Jen McCaffrey writes that the move happened so quickly that it caught Willis, who was coaching a game on Thursday, off guard. Despite how immediately the decision was made, Willis brings with him the fresh voice and experience the Sox were looking for in the wake of Nieves’ dismissal last week.

Given the way the Red Sox have hit during their recent slide, Hanley Ramirez’s return to the lineup Saturday was a welcomed site. Ramirez left last Monday’s game in the first inning after injuring his left shoulder, knocking him out of the lineup for the next three games. As WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford writes, Ramirez’s shoulder is still a concern given he’s had two surgeries on that same shoulder, but the left fielder is hopeful it won’t be a lingering issue.

I hate to bring it up, I really do. But you can’t go anywhere these days without a mention of Deflategate. According to a report by the Associated Press, Major League Baseball instituted a new policy to ensure ball security and storage in the wake of the New England Patriots’ deflated football scandal that has dominated sports for the last four months. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think it’s any coincidence this report came out just hours after quarterback Tom Brady was handed a four-game suspension and the team was fined $1 million and docked two draft picks.

Three Good Game Stories

CSNNE.com’s Sean McAdam recaps a memorable 24 hours for Pablo Sandoval, who on Sunday night received his Giants World Series ring and Monday hit an 11th inning home run to lift the Red Sox to a 5-4 win over the Oakland Athletics.

Clay Buchholz gave the struggling Red Sox a much-needed boost Sunday, Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald writes, going 6.1 strong innings to lead the Sox to a 6-3 win over the Blue Jays.

Saturday’s 7-1 loss to the Blue Jays marked the Red Sox’s seventh letdown in their last eight games. As MassLive.com’s Jen McCaffrey writes, the loss sparked a closed-door meeting led by David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia, delaying postgame media entrance into the clubhouse by an at least an extra 10 minutes.

Photo by Kim Klement/USA Today Sports Images