Partners Red Sox

Boston's World Series title defense hasn't gone quite as anyone anticipated, as the Red Sox have been outscored by the opposition and sit with a losing record on the outskirts of the playoff picture in the American League.

When Brock Holt does a pushup, he isn't lifting himself up: He's pushing the earth down.

Brock Holt doesn't call the wrong number. You answer the wrong phone.

Brock Holt does not sleep. He waits.

Sure, all these "facts" may originally have been attributed to Chuck Norris. But after an absurd start to the 2014 season, Holt is becoming a legend in his own right, serving as one of the lone bright spots for the Boston Red Sox this year.

The Boston Red Sox should make plenty of noise on July 2, the first day of the 2014-2015 international signing period.

The international signing phase is always difficult for teams, as they have to evaluate whether a 16-year-old player is worth a multimillion-dollar bonus. These players aren't even old enough to graduate high school and have years of physical maturation ahead of them. Further, these players are much less seasoned than the pool of talent available in the domestic draft due to age and other factors.

If the Boston Red Sox intend to make a playoff push in the second half of the season, they'll likely need to go after some outside help.  Below is a shopping list that may come in handy for the Red Sox as the trade deadline approaches:

1. Offense
2. More offense

To say that Boston is "offensively challenged" would be an understatement.

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.

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.

The Boston Red Sox are scuffling as the calendar turns to May, and Felix Doubront is becoming a poster boy for their struggles. Soon, he could be a part of a wave of changes for the team, as the Red Sox should think long and hard about replacing Doubront in the rotation if his inconsistency persists into late May and early June.