There are a lot of reasons why the Boston Red Sox won't be defending their World Series title in the 2019 MLB playoffs, and the team's lack of success at Fenway Park is perhaps the biggest.
The Red Sox made Fenway Park a fortress in 2018, where they went 57-24 en route to a 108-win regular season. Boston also went 4-2 at Fenway Park in the 2018 postseason en route to a championship.
The 2019 season has been far different.
The Red Sox are guaranteed to finish below .500 at home for the first time since 2014. Sox manager Alex Cora, during an MLB Network Radio interview Wednesday, pointed to his team's struggles at Fenway Park as a huge roadblock to returning to playoff action this year.
“I think the most important thing, actually, is we’ve got to back to dominating at home," Cora said. "For some reason we weren’t good (at home). You look at the teams around us — New York 57-24, Tampa 47-33, we’re at 37-41. That includes London, but still we played below .500 at home. For us to make it to the next level, we have to dominate there. It’s a different season, it’s something that over the course of the season we were never able to get on track. Even when you’re struggling, when you go home, you have to win series, and you’ve got to dominate at home, and we didn’t do that.”
The Red Sox, despite their inconsistent play, still had a chance in July and early August to earn a Wild Card playoff berth in the American League. However, Boston has earned a lackluster 17-19 record at Fenway Park in the second half of the season, and this helped erase any chance of playing October baseball in 2019.
The Red Sox have a ton of areas to improve for 2020, and their performance at Fenway Park should be at, or near the top of the list.
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