Red Sox’s Marcelo Mayer contradicts Willson Contreras ‘excuse’ for slump

The MLB regular season is one big endurance test; in fact, among the major North American professional sports, the MLB might have the grindiest regular season of them all. There are 162 games in a single season, so teams are going to encounter adversity one way or another — with the Boston Red Sox learning of that firsthand amid a 4-6 stretch over their past 10, including a 3-1 loss to the Houston Astros on Sunday.

The Red Sox are currently in dead last in the AL East standings with a 13-21 record, and while it’s still early in the season, they are losing plenty of ground. For a team that looked to be on the rise last season after making it to the playoffs with a bright young core, this is nothing short of disappointing.

And it looks as though the locker room is in complete and utter disarray. After first baseman Willson Contreras basically pinned the blame for the Red Sox’s struggles on the inexperience of the team’s young players, one of the team’s bright young talents in Marcelo Mayer punched back.

“To me, that’s kind of an excuse: blame the young guys. But at the end of the day, we’re all playing baseball, we’re all pros. We all know what we need to do. I don’t think we’re doing a good job with runners in scoring position. When you don’t do that, you don’t score runs,” Mayer said, per Sean McAdam of Mass Live.

Like last year, the Red Sox may have to make some drastic moves early in the season to prevent this rot from festering even further and poisoning the team completely. Firing manager Alex Cora may just be the beginning of a major clean-out process the Red Sox front office would have to do to prevent the team from falling off the pace in the AL East even further.

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