BOSTON -- After a tough couple of days in which a thin starting rotation was exposed, the Red Sox brought some new hope with them to Fenway Park on Monday night with the start of the opener experiment.

And for one inning, that went well. After that, things felt all too much like the previous two days.

A 7-4 loss to the Mets left Boston at 1-3, and with more questions than answers. It also left the team leader understandably dejected.

• Box score

"Man, it's rough, to be honest," Xander Bogaerts said of continuing to be faced with early-inning deficits. "It's tough. Obviously it's not just like one run. It's a couple of runs and then they just find a way to add on before we can get something going. I mean, we were down, 7-0, and we just kind of chip, chip, chip."

In a normal season, you could say, "It's early, it's a long season."

But as everyone knows, this season is just 60 games, and the Red Sox need to start figuring out some things soon if they are going to be competitive.

For starters, who can they rely on for some outs?

In what was easily the most encouraging development of the night, Zack Godley looks as if he could be up to the task.

The righty, who won 15 games for Arizona two years ago, fired four shutout innings (no walks, seven strikeouts) in his debut for the Red Sox. This was on the heels of Godley throwing three no-hit innings against the Blue Jays in an exhibition game last week.

The reason Godley couldn't influence Monday's outcome is because the Red Sox were down 7-1 by the time he threw his first pitch of the night.

With the benefit of hindsight, it was easy to wonder why manager Ron Roenicke didn't call on Godley sooner, especially when the plan was for him to be the bulk-innings guy in the first opener arrangement of the season.

"It's really just matching up with all their left-handers," Roenicke explained. "That was the reason both of them were out there. Started [Josh] Osich and hoped to get two-plus innings and get through the lineup with the three lefties at the end, and [Jeffrey] Springs same thing.

"Godley pitched great. Four really good innings. Obviously you never know coming into a game what's going to happen. But those are the decisions you make. You try to match up and it didn't go well."

However, Godley provided Roenicke with a reason to give him a higher-leverage opportunity next time, be it as a traditional starter, an opener or a bulk-innings guy who comes in earlier than he did on Monday.

"That's up to the guys up top," said Godley. "I'm just glad I could come in and help throw up some zeros and try to give a chance to come back and win that ballgame."

As the opener, Osich made his first career start. He set a nice enough tone with a scoreless first inning. But after a leadoff walk in the second, the lefty left a 92 mph fastball middle-in to Michael Conforto, who belted it to right-center for a two-run homer.

It got worse for the second pitcher deployed by Roenicke. Springs was tagged for a monstrous two-run homer by Pete Alonso in the third and then a three-run shot by Dominic Smith in the fourth, and it was 7-0.

For the third straight day, the Boston bats were forced to play with an early deficit of five runs or more. It was also the third consecutive game the Red Sox gave up seven runs.

The offense, projected to be upper-echelon again this season, battled back in the mid to late innings to make the final score respectable, much like they did on Sunday.

That included Mitch Moreland going deep for the second time this season, and Bogaerts hammering his first homer. Both were solo shots.

"It's hard," said Roenicke. "You know you have a good offense, but when you get down early soon, every game it's hard to bounce back. I thought our guys did a good job hanging in there. I thought we hit a lot of balls hard and ended up scoring four runs. We still did some good things offensively, but I understand what you're saying. It's hard when you get down right away."

In the end, there was just too much to overcome.

"Obviously we've got guys who haven't been swinging the way we know we can," said Bogaerts. "That's going to change. This team is just built so good offensively. We proved that we can come back. We're capable of doing that."

But there is a limit to the burden any team can place on its offense.

"I mean, if you've got to score eight, nine, 10 runs every game, I think honestly it's a little tough," said Bogaerts.