How Red Sox are looking to improve their defense

This story was excerpted from Ian Browne’s Red Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

As the Red Sox get set to play their 60th game of the season on Monday afternoon at Fenway Park against the Rays, their record (30-29) is a good enough indicator of their inconsistency.

But there is one facet of the club that is clearly holding them back from being the best version of themselves.

That would be defense. If it doesn’t improve soon, a shot at a postseason berth will become a pipe dream.

As they start the week, the Sox are five games back for a Wild Card spot.

The reason they aren’t closer in the standings is because of plays like the one that took place on Sunday in a 6-2 loss to the Rays, when multiple breakdowns on the same play led to a Little League two-run homer for Tampa Bay.

At some point in July, the Sox are expected to get Trevor Story back, and he will solidify the middle of the infield. Adam Duvall could be back from the injured list by Friday night at Yankee Stadium, and that will certainly help in the outfield.

However, the main thing that needs to improve is the team’s overall attention to detail while on D.

“We’ve got to keep preaching good defense. We’ve got to coach them,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “At the end, it’s on me. I’m the manager of this club and we've been sloppy. So it's not about pointing fingers. The roster is the roster and we have to play better baseball, but I'm the manager of this team and defensively, we're not good. We're not. We keep working. We're going to show up early and we’re going to keep talking about plays, we’re going to coach the players until we get it right.”

How quickly can this happen?

“When? I don’t know,” Cora said after Sunday’s loss. “If it’s tomorrow, it is 59 games too late. We’ve just got to keep going and keep going and keep going until we do it. Right now, we’re one game over .500. The season is going now and everybody's picking it up and we have to pick it up. And we can talk about winning series and all this stuff. This division is not easy. For stretches, we've been good. For stretches, we've been bad. And in other ones we've been OK. And I think, at the end we've just got to be better.”

The defensive issues are made obvious in the numbers.

Boston’s defense has minus-10 outs above average, which ranks 25th in the Majors. Cora’s crew has minus-17 defensive runs saved, which is also 25th. They are tied for first with 23 throwing errors -- 11 of them coming from the right arm of shortstop Kiké Hernández.

“I don't want to sound pessimistic or negative,” said Cora. “But we have to do it. We can talk all the talk. We can say that we’re better than this and all that but at the end, we have to be better. We have to go out there and perform. And there are certain areas in this team that are better than last year. But the defensive part of it, we have to improve. We have to.”