Papelbon, of course, was referring to the 2011 campaign — his last as a member of the Red Sox — when a team on pace for 100 wins through August collapsed, going 7-20 in September to get bounced from the playoff race on the season’s last day.
But that meltdown proved crushing precisely because it had a complementary bookend. The 2011 Sox started the year with six straight losses and were 2-10 through 12 games — just enough, in tandem with the woeful September, to render an 81-42 midyear run irrelevant.
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In the wreckage of 2011, Papelbon and his teammates lamented their dreadful start. He wonders if this year’s Sox will do the same.
“It was huge. There was so much talk about how all we [had needed] was a decent April [so] we wouldn’t [have been] in this situation,” said Papelbon, now a NESN analyst. “The great Tim Wakefield would say you break up [the season] into games by tens and try to win at least six of [every 10]. But you’ve put yourself behind the eight-ball so much, you’re having to win seven out of 10. And Pedro Martínez says April is a time where you really set yourself up for failure or success.
“[The 2026 Red Sox are] going to have to go on some great runs in order to turn this thing around. And I just don’t know if they have the pitching to turn this around,” he added.
“I just don’t see the intensity. I don’t see the wherewithal of what’s going on, and I don’t see it turning it around. I just don’t.”
With 152 games remaining after Monday’s contest, it seems early for such a dire assessment. Still, it’s fair to ask: How damaging is a grim start to playoff hopes?
Less than two weeks into the season, the Sox’ postseason odds — in the calculations of FanGraphs — nosedived from 61.2 percent to 44.7 percent, a 16.5 percent drop that is the largest in baseball to this early point.
A bad start isn’t the template for a playoff aspirant. In the World Series era (starting in 1903), the Red Sox are the 187th team to lose at least eight of their first 10 games. Of the first 186, just 12 (6.5 percent) reached the postseason. No team since the 1991 Twins overcame such poor play through 10 games to win a title.
In all eight prior instances when the Sox started 2-8 or worse, they missed the playoffs. Most famously, the 2011 team fell short by one game. While the chief culprit of their organizational implosion was the chicken-and-beer-fueled September collapse, a better start would have insulated the Sox.
However, that same year offers a glimmer of hope. The 2011 Rays — who knocked that ignominious Sox squad out of the playoffs in Game 162 — rode elite pitching to overcome a 2-8 start that season, finishing 91-71 with a wild-card berth.
Though that Rays team represents an exception as a playoff team that overcame an awful start, it’s easy to exaggerate the meaning of a season-opening 2-8 spell. Almost all teams experience such a slump. It just comes with the perceived weight of an anvil at the start of the season.
“It feels like we’ve been playing for a month,” sighed shortstop Trevor Story.
Yet baseball seasons don’t follow a set pattern. A 2-8 stretch in April is no different than one in July or September, save for the fact that its significance tends to be magnified by the absence of context.
Last year, the Brewers lost their first four games — “Putrid in every aspect,” recalled Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy — and subsequently had a 2-7 stagger in May that made them look like potential deadline sellers. Instead, they caught a wave and finished with an MLB-high 97 wins.
“If it’s less than a month . . . I think it’s a small sample size,” said Murphy. “We’re so close, all of us, in who can beat [whom] at any given time . . . There’s so many ways that the game can get turned around. I just think any time you emphasize that stuff, you’re missing it. You’re probably going to be wrong to emphasize that the start indicates too much.”
Also noteworthy: The expanded 12-team playoff field has made things more forgiving of slumps. Last year, nine of the 12 teams that reached the playoffs had at least one 2-8 stretch.
Perhaps more immediately relevant to the Sox: Since the introduction of the third Wild Card in 2022, three playoff teams lost at least seven of their first 10 games. No teams did so when there were just two Wild Cards from 2011-21.
So, it’s probably premature to rule out October baseball for the 2026 Red Sox. Still, that caveat doesn’t diminish the urgency for this year’s club to show that its awful start represents an aberration and not a harbinger.
Alex Speier can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @alexspeier.
