Boston Red Sox

David Ortiz says he has lost respect for David Price.

In the process, a lot of people have lost respect for Ortiz.

Fifty games into the 2014 MLB season, the defending World Series champion Boston Red Sox find themselves at the bottom of the AL East.  Even with over 110 games left, Boston fans should start to panic.  Here are the five biggest takeaways from the struggling Red Sox's season so far.

They Need to Start Hitting

We're nearly two full months into the 2014 season and we've seen enough from many of the Boston Red Sox's top prospects to judge their developmental progress so far this year.

Many of their starting pitching prospects have made 10-plus starts. Many of their hitters are nearing 200 plate appearances. We're even seeing some players promoted on the backs of fast starts and organizational need. The sample sizes may be too small to hold predictive value, but they're no longer too small to tell us part of a story in many cases.

Year one of the Xander Bogaerts era at shortstop is not going as planned.

In a bid to invigorate a slumping offense, the Red Sox signed former shortstop Stephen Drew to a one-year contract Tuesday, as Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal broke.

More than six months after he rejected a qualifying offer, only to find no takers in free agency, infielder Stephen Drew finally has a home for 2014 after re-signing with the Boston Red Sox.

It has been a nightmarish start to the season for 25-year-old Will Middlebrooks, and it's about to get even worse. 

According WEEI.com's Alex Speier, the Red Sox have placed the third baseman on the disabled list with a fractured finger:

The world champion Boston Red Sox stumbled out of the gate this year, posting a 13-16 record through May 1.  Since then the Red Sox have won six of their last eight games and all three series they've played.

Now 19-18, Boston owns a winning record for the first time in nearly six weeks, and is only 1.5 games back of the division lead.

They say numbers never lie, and this also rings true for the 2014 Boston Red Sox. A maddeningly inconsistent but nonetheless exciting start to the season has left the Red Sox with plenty of reasons for both optimism and doubt moving forward as the weather warms up and players fully enter their regular-season grooves.

As the second month of the 2014 MLB season gets underway, the defending World Series champion Boston Red Sox are a .500 ball club.  While there is still a lot of baseball remaining, Boston has already played roughly 20 percent of the games on its schedule.  That's enough of a sample size to begin to make some conclusions about this year's edition of the Red Sox.