Disasters don’t just happen. They’re generally caused by the residue of numerous small, seemingly inconsequential things lining up. A combination of fail-safes falling through, and stars aligning to create a catastrophic chain reaction.

The Hindenburg did just blow up. They were using hydrogen instead of helium and the airship’s fabric covering was not well-grounded. The Titanic didn’t just sink. They sailed a ship full of shoddy rivets into an ice field at high speeds despite multiple ice warnings in the hours preceding the calamity. And the 2025 Red Sox don’t just happen to embarrass themselves over and over again and fail to execute in almost every one run game. The front office created a roster and continues to field a lineup that’s designed to fail when you need them to come through the most. The pieces don’t fit, and the ones they do have are not being used properly.

Take for instance the bottom seven hitters in the Sox starting lineup for this game:

3) Rob Refsnyder RF

4) Romy Gonzalez 1B

5) Abraham Toro 3B

6) Trevor Story SS

7) Ceddanne Rafaela CF

8 Connor Wong C

9) Kristian Campbell 2B

Are you kidding me? Does that look like a lineup from a serious baseball team? I don’t drink on Tuesdays, but I should have started after this thing came out. Exactly zero of those guys have a career OPS+ over 100 outside of Coors Field, and to get that putrid offensive output, they fielded an infield of Toro, Story, Campbell and Gonzalez, who have a combined -17 Defensive Runs Saved on the season. Woof!

Apparently, there’s a couple of sacred items in the Red Sox clubhouse in addition to the home run Wally head. They include the big book of stupid baseball rules, which Alex Cora subscribes to religiously, and the sorting hat from Harry Potter.

Since the big book of stupid baseball rules states that you can’t start your young left handed hitters against left handed starting pitching if they show the slightest inkling of struggle, the right handed boys got the opportunity to try out the sorting hat before tonight’s game. Evidently, when Alex Cora placed it on Romy Gonzalez’s head, it uttered the words “cleanup hitter” and he was awarded the opportunity to bat fourth.

The baseball gods saw this heresy and decided to strike down the abomination with their classic brand of ruthless and soul crushing consequences. Bottom of the ninth inning, two out, winning run on third base, and guess who comes to the plate? Of course it was Romy Gonzalez, who was already 0-4 on the night with three strike outs, and of course he grounded out to end the threat.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this game. There was a sequence in the second and third innings where the Sox strung together a Ceddanne Rafaela double, a Connor Wong single, a Kristian Campbell double and a Jarren Duran double on four consecutive batters and only scored one run. There was the eighth inning where Trevor Story led off with a single and Rafaela and Wong followed it up with a flyout and a double play.

Then there was the man on second nobody out situations in both the ninth and the tenth innings without scoring, the three errors tonight that gives the team the most in all of baseball, and the 1-13 figure with runners in scoring position.

They’re all part of the disaster, but they’re also all products of decisions being made long before the first pitch is thrown. You can’t throw out a second rate lineup and expect to win major league baseball games. This is the stuff I expect out of the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, not a big market club claiming it’s trying to contend for the postseason.

Oh, and speaking of second rate, look how NESN was covering this fiasco of a game. They were interviewing the hosts of Dining Playbook, a show on their sports network that has absolutely nothing to do with sports. So instead of continuous hard analysis on the multitude of mistakes made throughout the night, we got this:

I swear, NESN is just phoning it in and running out the clock until MLB decides what comes next for the way they broadcast the sport regionally. They are putting out the most insulting product imaginable for people who actually care to watch the games for the baseball.

Elsewhere, there’s plenty of other concerning topics from this game that on another night might also deserve their own deep dive. Most notably, Tyler Milliken brought up the extremely problematic lack of whiffs generated from Brayan Bello tonight.

So even though Bello got through six innings giving up three runs, it probably had just as much to do with the dreadful Angels lineup as it did with anything he was throwing.

I’m not sure what’s more pathetic, the Angels failing to get an extra base hit all night despite Bello not having any swing and miss stuff, or the Red Sox for not being able to beat a team in today’s MLB that didn’t have an extra base hit and almost gave up four of them in a row at one point.

Anyway, after the game, Alex Cora sounded downright despondent and had this to say:

“We keep making the same mistakes. We’re not getting better. At one point, has to be on me, I guess, right? I’m the manager, so, you know, I gotta keep pushing them to be better.”

“But they’re not getting better, you know. We keep making them the same mistakes, same mistakes. I’ll be very honest about it, very open about it, you know, you get frustrated. I was like, wow, this is real. It’s frustrating.”

Yeah, the lack of situational execution is becoming downright alarming!

But hey, you know who didn’t have a problem getting a big hit in the late innings tonight?

If this franchise didn’t exist, you couldn’t make them up!

Studs

Ceddanne Rafaela: 3-5 at the plate including this electric home run to tie the game in the sixth, which was also the hardest hit ball of his career.

Unfortunately, he also had an overzealous throwing error and the team didn’t score another run the rest of the night.

The combination of Greg Weissert, Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman: Together, they posted scoreless innings in the seventh, eighth and ninth after the Rafaela home run tied it up. They gave the team a fantastic opportunity to win, but this disturbingly ineffective lineup couldn’t manage to push another run across the plate against the worst bullpen in the American League.

Three Duds

Romy Gonzalez: You can’t bat this guy cleanup, have him go 0-5 with three strikes outs, and not have him end up here.

Zack Kelly: He somehow found his way back to the major leagues and ended up on the mound at Fenway tonight. Here’s how he immediately kicked off his return in extra innings:

Alex Cora : Aside from everything else going on and already covered, how does Marcelo Mayer not get an at bat in either of the last two games? Everything going on with this team right now is just mind boggling!

Play of the game:

The moment the Red Sox posted this lineup. You can’t expect to win baseball games running out this second rate trash!