The Red Sox season is early, but disappointment already runs deep

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” — Alexander Pope

Red Sox Nation expected quite a bit from the 2026 season, so this funk we’re in feels particularly brutal.

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It’s a sad state of affairs when disappointment settles in, like a thick bank of fog, even before mid-April has rolled around. I don’t have constructive suggestions. I’m not even sure these thoughts rise to the level of complaints since I’m not worked up about it anymore. What I can offer are mere observations—no hot takes, no surprises.

Starting rotation falls short so far

After all the preseason talk about our world-class rotation, let’s just say that things are running counter to plan. Crochet’s catastrophe of an outing in Minneapolis has received the lion’s share of the headlines, of course, but he’s not alone. This is no deep dive, but take a glance and admit no one predicted this. Stats as of April 18.

• Garrett Crochet: -0.6 WAR, 7.58 ERA
• Ranger Suárez: until Friday’s game, his stats were a not-great -0.1 WAR and a pretty ugly 5.02 ERA. That stabilizing performance improved these numbers to 0.4 WAR and 3.22. He has reentered respectable territory.
• Brayan Bello: these stats got worse with Saturday’s outing, dropping to -0.4 WAR and 6.75 ERA

Errors

And after I was looking forward to smooth defense, too! I talked it up, and this is the thanks I get.

Through April 13, the Red Sox were collecting errors at a slightly increased rate from 2025, when they led the league in errors for much of the season. It took four errorless games in a row to drive the rate down, if only slightly. This streak is the first of the season where the Sox have played more than two games in a row without an error. Along the way, they have also already logged four two-error games. So much for the Sox newfound defensive prowess.

And so it goes

Marcelo Mayer needing to step up, Roman Anthony shedding his cape and revealing that he is all too human, the stupid hit celebration…I won’t belabor these points again, so much as offer them as punctuation to my point that the Red Sox have been anything but fun to watch in 2026.

MLB Side Quest

As a matter of self-care, I turned to my local Mariners to seek relief from the torture of Red Sox fandom. Surprise, surprise, I ran up against a wall there too.

• An almost equally slow start to the season (9-13, compared to the Sox 8-12 as of April 18) has them falling far behind all expectations.
• Old friend Rob Refsnyder is hitless (0-18) as of April 18.
• Ferry fries have been MIA at T-Mobile Park due to some unfathomable oversight and it’s simply wrong. What does a fan have to do to have fun in 2026? I arrived incredibly early for a game last week JUST TO BOOST MY SPIRITS BY TAKING A SELFIE WITH THE FERRY FRIES only to find that they were completely out, indefinitely. As in, needing to source a new supplier or whatever. You know it’s bad when even comfort food lets you down.

It has to get better, right?

[Author’s note: at least the ferry fries returned, though with an unexpected rebrand. I will hope the same for the Red Sox.]