Red Sox fans were hoping that Boston’s start to the 2025 season would be much like the front office’s approach to the offseason — high-powered, bold, and productive. You know, one that would make the Red Sox the unquestioned leader in the AL East.

But Alex Bregman’s devastating face-plant while trying to make a play during the eighth inning of Monday’s game against the Baltimore Orioles has been more indicative of the Red Sox’s start to 2025 — absolutely brutal.

For those of you who missed it, Bregman tried to make a heroic play on a ground ball off the bat of Orioles’ slugger Ryan Mountcastle. Ranging to his left, Bregman stabbed the bouncing ball out of midair, but was unable to find his footing. As he flipped the ball to second base, he caught a face full of dirt.

No clue how Alex Bregman didn’t break his nose. pic.twitter.com/9MHmCLBk5J

— Tyler Milliken (@tylermilliken_) March 31, 2025
Bregman emerged with a cut on the bridge of his nose, and the runners advanced to second and third. The Red Sox third baseman was charged with an error on the play. The O’s would go on to plate four more runs that inning and won by a final score of 8-5.

Alex Bregman completely face-planting sums up Red Sox’s start to 2025

The Sox dropped to 1-5 on the season and are sitting in the AL East basement. As a team, Boston is hitting just .201/.289/.302 and have 55 strikeouts on the season. Only the Cubs have more whiffs, but Chicago’s also played in two more games after opening their 2025 campaign overseas against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Japan.

Rafael Devers’ struggles have been well documented. The Red Sox’s slugger continued to go 0-fer on the season with three more strikeouts on Monday against the O’s, but at least he drew a pair of walks.

If it weren’t for the Red Sox’s late-night agreement with Garrett Crochet on a six-year contract extension, the entire city of Boston would be in an uproar. And while Crochet’s contract will help to stem the tide, that euphoria will wear off rather quickly if the Red Sox don’t start compiling some wins.

Boston is off on Tuesday with their newly-signed ace taking the hill against Baltimore on Wednesday. It’s very early, and there’s plenty of time for the Red Sox to turn the ship around, but an opening series loss to the Texas Rangers, followed by Monday’s loss to the Orioles has Boston fans on edge.

Maybe the Crochet contract extension is just the type of spark this team needed to start playing inspired baseball.

But Red Sox fans can’t be seeing Devers struggle this badly at the plate while Bregman makes an embarrassing error like that in the early going.