The Red Sox aren’t doomed (yet)

Remembering that the Red Sox won the 2013 World Series has been the highlight of the current season. Boston currently sits at 20-26, in fourth place in the American League East, with both the lineup and rotation looking like shells of their championship selves less than two months into a new campaign. It’s pretty easy to panic and mewl at this point, if only because, even after one of the most successful decades in sports’ history, Boston still doesn’t know how to cope with defeat, outside of turning up the Woe Is Me dial to 11. If you take a step back, though, and look at how many ways the Red Sox still have of making a go at this thing, you can hold off on the fretfulness. For now, anyway.

Some things are working right for the Sox, so we won’t bother with those. Instead, let’s tackle the problems to show there’s still a way to turn each one around before it’s too late.

Between the struggles of Will Middlebrooks and the performance of the players who have filled in for him during his two stints on the disabled list, Red Sox third basemen are batting a combined .216/.320/.304. The on-base is actually above the league-average for third (and the league as a whole) at the moment, but the rest is total garbage that has the Sox getting 20 percent less out of the hot corner than the average team.

The Red Sox have already come up with a solution to fix this, though. They signed Stephen Drew to play shortstop, which will shift rookie Xander Bogaerts and his 120 OPS+ to third. Bogaerts hasn’t begun to hit for power, yet he’s shown an ability to collect hits and walks with regularity. If the dingers appear as scouts expect them to, the Sox will go from one of the worst third base situations in the majors to one of the best.

As for Drew, last year he was 27 percent better offensively than your average shortstop and far steadier defensively than Bogaerts -- who maybe isn’t a shortstop long-term anyway -- has been. That’s potential improvement on both sides of the ball for the left side of the infield, all with one move that’s already been made.

The Red Sox need to recall Daniel Nava from Triple-A and put an end to the Zombie Grady Sizemore experiment. The only skill from his healthier youth that seems to have remained is his 80-grade handsomeness, as he’s batting all of .218/.293/.336 and is limited to playing in left field defensively. Nava’s no Gold Glove candidate, but he would help improve Boston’s poor performance against right-handed pitching: he batted .322/.411/.484 against them in 2013, is at .284/.383/.437 against them for his career, and seems to have remembered how to mash them once more during his get-right demotion to Pawtucket.

Getting Nava back to the majors to bring up Boston’s production against the right-handed pitchers they’ll see in about three-quarters of their games would be a massive help, and in conjunction with Jonny Gomes’ lefty-murdering, Boston would be able to count left field as an asset instead of a liability once again.

With Sizemore around, Middlebrooks and Victorino bouncing from the lineup to the DL and back, and the platoons Boston has tried to utilize, the lineup has been a mess. Boston has used a different lineup in all but a handful of games in 2014, so once Drew returns and Sizemore is (hypothetically) pushed aside for Nava, we might finally see some consistency. Perhaps something like this would suffice:

Those wouldn’t be completely set in stone, since backup catchers work when they work for the most part, and the Middlebrooks’ inclusion is dependent entirely on how long manager John Farrell and Co. plan on keeping him as the short side of a platoon with Drew, or how long they think they should switch Bogaerts back-and-forth between defensive positions based on the opposing starter. That could end up being for days, weeks, or the rest of the season.

A more stable (and logical) lineup certainly couldn’t hurt their efforts to better deliver with runners on and in scoring position, though.

The performance of the rotation has been shocking. People are saying they saw Clay Buchholz’s struggles coming, but he owned a 131 ERA+ during his years as a full-time starter -- dating back to 2009 -- before this season’s disaster. Basically, if you hear someone claim they just knew he was doomed, don’t listen to them, lest they make you dumber about baseball. That doesn’t mean Buchholz is without fault for 2014, obviously, because something has to be done with him, whether it’s teaching him mechanics that work again in a hurry or having Gomes punch him in the arm until it bruises enough for a DL and rehab stint.

He’s not alone in his problems. Felix Doubront is taking his consistency problems to a new low, and Jake Peavy’s late-career act of slinging the ball in and hoping it doesn’t get sent into orbit has been more hit than miss in the wrong way. Jon Lester has been great, Thursday’s rare miscue the exception, and John Lackey has continued to be a steady, above-average presence. They need more, though.

They might get it from Brandon Workman and Allen Webster, two starting pitching prospects currently sitting in Triple-A waiting for an excuse to pitch in the majors. With Doubront on the disabled list after smacking his shoulder against a car door*, there’s one excuse, and if either Buchholz or Peavy takes some time off to get right, that’s another. They aren’t necessarily cure alls, either, but Webster has swing-and-miss capabilities with multiple pitches and a hard sinker that induces grounders. If his command is in working order, he could be a valuable starter for Boston both now and in the future. Workman doesn’t have that repertoire, but he’s got the control and the body to pitch deep into games: if his command is on point, too, the ball should stay in the yard, and Boston’s offense within striking distance of the opposition.

*I’m assuming Gomes ambushed him for the good of the team. I’m sorry if your image of Gomes’ utility doesn’t match up with my own.

None of this is necessarily guaranteed to work, but it all points in the right direction. Drew is an obvious upgrade, Bogaerts manages to upgrade on himself by shifting to an easier defensive position, and the return of the Nava/Gomes platoon could be a massive boost, especially when you consider how poor Sizemore has been. The roster might not end up perfect like it seemed to be at times last year: Jackie Bradley Jr’s glove is incredible, but he might not figure out major-league pitching in time to completely salvage his 2014, and the rotation is likely to have at least one problem arm in it all year long unless Buchholz remembers he’s one of the league’s best pitchers when he’s on the mound.

And hey, if all that fails, I’ll be in the corner staring at 2013 World Series merchandise and Boston’s prospects to keep me going once the championship halo wears off. With a little luck they haven’t managed to find to this point in the year, they can avoid that fate for their fans, as it’s still just May, and we haven’t seen the real Red Sox yet.