Slumping Sox: Where Have The Bats Gone In Boston?

The Boston Red Sox are currently 1-5 since the All-Star break and are currently on a season high four game losing streak. The Sox have only pondered across 12 runs over that five game span. But why are the Red Sox doing so poorly? Is this just their season slump that every team seems to find?

I hope this is only a mid-season slump that they will turn around soon. They have been only averaging 2.4 runs per game so far since the break, and their power hitters, Jason Bay, David Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis, and pretty much the whole team has just not been producing. The only part of the team that has been playing well is the pitching staff, despite John Smoltz who just can't seem to find his own.

Thanks to the 1-5 record, the Sox have fallen one game behind the New York Yankees, first time they have been out of first place since early June. But come on, you didn't really expect this would happen. Year after year the Yanks have seemed to find first place by August, and this year, it happened again.

As a Red Sox fan, should we be concerned? Well I guess we should only be concerned if General Manager Theo Epstein is worried enough that he makes a big move by the July 31 trading deadline.

But what are the Sox options? Speculations have been about Blue Jays' third basemen Scott Rolen, but I guess that's kind of far fetched, but would make a lot of sense. Seeing Lowell is hurt almost all the time, and Rolen struggles to be on the field too sometimes, so seeing Lowrie, Rolen, and Lowell in a rotation would be pretty good. But I think Boston can get by just fine with Lowrie, Lowell, and Youk rotating around at thrid.

Roy Halladay is an option I suppose, but he won't help the offense too much. I would love to see Theo make a run at him because this staff would be just lights out if they made it to the playoffs. But Toronto's GM J.P. Riccardi might have too much of a demand of Sox prospects. But we'll see what Theo does because he has a good track record and we all should trust him.

To be honest with you, I don't think the Red Sox have too many options out there to make a big splash in finding a quality offensive threat. Adrian Gonzalez? Adam Dunn? I'm not sure. I think that Theo might settle with the team he has or find a decent player that can be an upgrade offensive of Mark Kotsay.

Or the Red Sox should just set back and let it play out. Last year the Tampa Bay Rays made a living out of timely hitting, and that led them to the World Series. What the Red Sox are lacking right now is timely hitting, and sure enough that will come around because it seems like most of the players are hitting the ball hard, but in the wrong places. The Rays earlier this year started off slow due to the lack of timely hitting, so that just might be what is happening to Boston right now.

But if the timely hitting doesn't come, we have about a week and a half until the trade deadline, so fans should just sit tight and hope that the bats come around, but we do have trade bait in Brady Penny and Takashi Saito, but I don't expect too much of a return from these players. We'll just see if Theo can make the right moves to put Boston over the top.