Krause: Situation looks bleak for Red Sox

The question is not whether the Boston Red Sox have reverted back to form and come up woefully short in their bid to win an American League pennant.The question is whether you’re surprised.And if you are, haven’t you been paying attention?What the Red Sox have done against the Cleveland Indians since the early innings of Game 2 – which is absolutely nothing – has an old familiar ring to it. This is what they’ve done all year.The Red Sox have been maddeningly inconsistent. They’ve absolutely lacked any sense of urgency, and shown absolutely no ability either to put teams away or to put the pedal down and leave someone in the dirt.The Indians, on the other hand, have.Cleveland and the Red Sox played out their respective races in reverse. The Red Sox went out in front early, hitting a high-water mark (at least in terms of the length of their American League East lead) before June. On the other hand, the Indians were neck-and-neck not only with the Detroit Tigers but the Minnesota Twins for a while, too.But when it was time to deal with both Minnesota and Detroit, the Indians were ready. First, they kicked the Twins aside, sweeping them in a series in August, and then they just put it in overdrive in September, leaving the Tigers gasping for air.The Red Sox couldn’t do that. They couldn’t shake the Yankees once the Bronx Bombers started picking up the pace. Oh, they survived ? but just barely.If you have to put the blame anywhere, it would be the offense. It’s not that the team can’t hit. But it can’t hit consistently. It’ll go four or five games tearing the cover off the ball; and then it’ll go four or five more games without hitting a thing.Nowhere was this more evident than the last week of August, when the Red Sox went into Chicago and absolutely obliterated the pathetic White Sox. They scored 10 or more runs in all four games, and left that town feeling, and looking, as if they’d finally put it all together.From there, they went into New York and just died. They couldn’t do a thing against the Yankees, got swept, and not only allowed them to creep back into the wild-card race, but kept their hopes of snatching away the division alive as well.This was all due to inconsistent offense. At times during the year, the entire bottom of the order (we’re talking from six on down) was one gigantic automatic out.You’re not going to win games that way. In 2004, the bottom of the order was lethal.This puts enormous pressure on pitching staffs. But except for Josh Beckett, name a pitcher who’s been anywhere near an automatic “W” since the All-Star break. There isn’t one.Curt Schilling? Jon Lester? Tim Wakefield? Daisuke Matsuzaka? They’ve all been trick or treat. If it weren’t for the bullpen, which really held up its share of the load, this team would have collapsed down the stretch.These same problems are manifesting themselves now, when the team can least afford to be plagued by them. The starting pitching has been awful in this series, save for Beckett.You have to feel for Wakefield, the old warrior, who pitched pretty well Tuesday until the fifth, when a couple of softly hit balls caused his inning to blow up on him.But other than that ? Schilling coughed up a lead the team got when Fausto Carmona inexplicably blew up in Game 2. Matsuzaka is either too tired to pitch anymore this year, or his agent, Scott Boras, pulled the wool squarely over Theo Epstein’s eyes.And Manny Delcarmen – the man Epstein has refused to trade more than once – is perhaps more of a goat than even Eric Gagne. It was Delcarmen who coughed up a 6-5 lead Saturday, and it was Delcarmen who, Tuesday, allowed that fifth inning to get totally out of hand.Is this their obituary? It would appear so. But as fast as the Red Sox plummet, that’s as fast as they rise up. They can lose three in a row without blinking an eye; and they can win three in a row just as rapidly.And, after all, as bad as they looked the last two nights, they looked a whole lot worse after Game 3 in