Games like this are exactly the reason the Red Sox are six-and-a-half games out of first. Watching that mess wasn’t just a little frustrating, like that bra you just can’t seem to unhook one-handed. This was the enraging kind of frustrating where your stomach starts to hurt and you start imagining people you don’t like being dismembered and thinking about burning things. You know those feelings, right?

Losing to the likes of Cleveland on any night is an embarrassment, but to completely implode after Tuesday night’s majestic win is just inexcusable. Do these guys just not understand “momentum?” Did Beckett and Teets take them out for Taco Bell, hookers and shots after the brawl game? Seriously, that win should have ignited them. Getting Ellsbury back (0-for-5 notwithstanding) should have motivated them. Instead they go out and play like a bunch of stumble-bums. There it is, folks, I’ve just thrown down on them by dropping a “stumble-bum.” Now it’s on.

This team, despite all their success, has absolutely, irrefutably SUCKED against the dregs of the American League:

  • vs. Baltimore: 3-3
  • vs. Cleveland: 3-3
  • vs. Kansas City: 4-3
  • vs. Seattle: 2-2
  • vs. Oakland: 3-3

If they hadn’t beaten up on Toronto (7-2) and the Angels (7-0), they’d be barely above .500 for the season. The next five games could decide their fate. Unless they demolish Cleveland in the series finale and take 3-out-of-four from the Yankees, the race is over. O-V-E-R. And wouldn’t that suck.