Boston Red Sox: Problems in Boston Are Overblown and Easy to Fix

Red Sox Nation is prone to overreaction. If the Sox lose one game, the Nation is on high alert. If the Sox lose two games, the Nation starts demanding answers. And so on.

If the Red Sox go 7-20 in September, squander a huge Wild Card lead and miss out on the playoffs in heartbreaking fashion, you're looking at something just short of a nuclear apocalypse. And alas, the fallout will linger.

You may have noticed that this is a nightmare the Nation is living right now. What's worse is that it only seems to be getting worse. It would have been bad enough if there was just the collapse, but the collapse has been followed by the departures of manager Terry Francona and general manager Theo Epstein.

And then we got the Boston Globe story. You know, the one that presents shocking revelations of incompetence, disinterest, personal crises and rampant beer and fried chicken consumption. The Sox are basically portrayed as a fraternity of emo kids who could have cared less about baseball.

Is this whole thing a simple smear campaign, as has been suggested by ESPNBoston.com's Gordon Edes and several other notable media members? Don't you doubt it for a second.

But are we making way, way too much of the apparently rotten state of the Red Sox?

In my humble opinion, yes. We are.

Listen, things in Boston are definitely bad. There is a problem of accountability among the players the Sox have under contract, and it's up to the club's management to fix these problems. Hiring a new gm and manager will just be the first step. After that, the emphasis will be on reestablishing the winning culture that the Red Sox had previously been known for.

Yes, this will mean setting a select few players straight. Chief among these would be the trio of starting pitchers —Josh Beckett, John Lackey and Jon Lester — who would retreat to the clubhouse for beer, fried chicken and video games (a winning combination).

That may actually be pretty easy. For example, former Florida Marlins manager Jack McKeon told the Palm Beach Post today that he used to have the same problem with Beckett back in 2003, and he came up with a very simple solution:

Lock the clubhouse.

Whether by using this strategy (for lack of a better word) or some other, it should be easy enough to keep Beckett, Lackey and Lester in the dugout. That will lead to increased solidarity pretty much by default. Which, if nothing else, is a start.

Beyond the clubhouse frequenters, the biggest problem the Red Sox faced in September was a simple lack of competitive fire. It was an attitude problem that can be attributed to individual players and Francona's dwindling ability to motivate them.

The thing that I think is being overlooked, though, is the fact that it was also a losing problem. Given the pitching problems the Sox had down the stretch, it would be understandable if there was a widespread sense that the season was doomed no matter what they did.

Had the Red Sox managed to win just two extra games in September, they would have made the playoffs, and that sense of doom would have evaporated. Nobody would have been the wiser.

Instead, it happened. Here we are, feeling a little wiser and little more depressed the more we hear about it.

When you take a step back and put the big picture in perspective, it's clear that all of this has been brought about by a perfect storm. A lot of things had to go wrong for the Sox to miss the postseason, and it just so happens that this is exactly what happened.

It sucks, but the odds of something like this happening again must be considered to be very, very slim. The Sox are a well-run organization, they have a talented roster, and they're not going to want to go through something like this again.

If I had to take a guess right here and now, they won't.