There’s a certain cruel poetry to baseball. One moment, you're perched on the edge of contention, with a manager promising better days ahead. The next, you're staring down the barrel of another lost summer. That’s where the Boston Red Sox find themselves. Alex Cora’s bold declaration last fall — “this will be the last struggle” — has aged poorly. Instead of redemption, Boston’s 2025 campaign has been one long sigh of disappointment, riddled with injuries, roster gambles, and self-inflicted wounds.

To be fair, not all of this collapse has been entirely self-made. Injuries have ravaged key pieces of the puzzle. First baseman Triston Casas and newly acquired third baseman Alex Bregman were supposed to anchor a revamped lineup but now sit sidelined, watching helplessly. Yet around the league, injuries are part of the landscape. The Yankees lost Gerrit Cole. The Blue Jays lost Scherzer. The Orioles’ rotation resembles a triage unit. The difference? Others have found ways to overcome. The Red Sox have not.

And it's not as though Boston sat idle last winter. They made moves — bringing in Garrett Crochet, who has been everything they hoped for, spinning a 1.98 ERA into an ace’s workload. Bregman, before his injury, produced like the star he is. But alongside these bright spots came the gambles: Walker Buehler, still fighting to recapture his pre-surgery form; Lucas Giolito, another bet on damaged goods, now saddled with a 6.42 ERA. The Red Sox have lived by the buy-low sword. In 2025, they’re dying by it.

At the center of the clubhouse drama stands Rafael Devers — a superstar at the plate but increasingly complicated off it. His refusal to shift positions after the signing of Bregman raised eyebrows both inside and outside the organization. While his bat remains potent, Boston’s internal messaging missteps — first treating him like a kid, then abruptly asking him to lead — have only deepened the dysfunction. Leadership, like championship baseball, can’t be flipped on like a light switch.

And then there’s the defense — or more accurately, the lack of it. No team can survive leading the majors in errors while losing 17 one-run games this early in the season. Manager Alex Cora has shouldered the blame, but even he seems resigned to the reality that his young, miscast infield simply isn’t up to the task. Prioritizing range over reliability may have been a noble experiment; in practice, it’s yielded more heartbreak than highlight reels.

​So here stand the Red Sox, again at a crossroads. The front office may soon face uncomfortable choices: trade rumors swirling around Jarren Duran, potential deadline moves involving veterans like Aroldis Chapman, and the looming question of whether this is truly the “last struggle” or simply another chapter in a franchise that has stumbled badly in its attempt to rebuild on the fly. The trains keep rolling through Fenway. Right now, Boston is the one standing on the tracks.