We’re barely past Memorial Day, and the 2025 Red Sox are broken down on the side of the road and thumbing a ride to 2026.

On one hand, it’s frustrating to see a season that began with a lot of promise evaporate before the school year is over. On the other hand, it’s frustrating to know there’s another summer of mediocre baseball ahead of us.

Following Wednesday afternoon’s extra-inning loss in Milwaukee, the Red Sox are 27-31, 9 1/2 games behind the Yankees in the American League East standings, and 4 1/2 games out of a wild-card spot. Wednesday’s loss was a season-high fifth in a row. The high point of the season so far was a four-game winning streak in mid-April. That’s not building momentum toward the heart of the season.

A year ago on this date, the Red Sox were 28-28. In 2023, they were 28-25. The 2025 season is another verse in the same lousy song.

What has gone wrong? Pull up a chair.

Since scoring 19 runs last Friday in a win over the Orioles, the Sox have scored 16 runs total in six games. Three times in those six games, they were held to one run. In the time it took you to read that last sentence, Trevor Story popped out to shortstop and stranded nine runners on base.

T. S. Eliot wrote “April is the cruelest month” as the first line to his brilliant poem “The Waste Land,” but Story’s May has been the cruelest, to Story and Red Sox fans alike. He’s 14 for 88 this month, for a .159 batting average. His on-base percentage is a lethargic .204. Take away the modest three game hitting streak to open May, and it gets even worse. He has one home run this month, with just five RBI and seven runs scored. To say Story is scuffling would be underselling it a great deal.

After this season, Boston still owes Story $50 million, but it might be time to cut him loose and eat the remainder of the contract. Is Story done? He’s only 32, so it feels like he should have something left, but maybe all the injuries in recent seasons caught up to him. It really feels like were it not for the injury to third baseman Alex Bregman, rookie Marcelo Mayer would’ve already been installed as the everyday shortstop.

Devastating long-term injuries to Triston Casas and Bregman are dumb luck. As for not having a Plan B at first base that doesn’t involve asking Rafael Devers, a player you told to toss his glove into Boston Harbor in spring training, to learn a new position, that’s on Craig Breslow and the front office.

Was there no planning afoot as this team was being constructed? No meeting in which Breslow, team president Sam Kennedy, and their lieutenants brainstormed possible scenarios? If there was such a meeting, they probably spent 30 seconds on first base before moving on.

Breslow: What if Casas gets hurt?

Kennedy: Romy Gonzalez can fill in.

Breslow: And if Gonzalez is also injured?

Kennedy: We’ll just move Devers to first.

Breslow: And if he balks at that since we told him he plays defense like a backstop?

Kennedy: Meh. We’ll just tell Kristian Campbell to learn first base.

I get it. You prioritize and can’t plan for everything, and after making his valid point about being jerked around by the front office, Devers should have discreetly started taking some grounders at first base, if it’s possible to do anything discreetly in Boston.

Some good can come from this. Play the kids. Fans of a certain age will remember 1987. That season was lost early, and the team committed to playing youngsters. The lineup often featured rookies like Mike Greenwell, Ellis Burks, Todd Benzinger and John Marzano. None of them became superstars (Greenwell was runner-up to Jose Canseco and his steroids for the American League Most Valuable Player award in 1988, but Burks had the best career), but they set the team on a path that led to division titles in 1988 and 1990.

So keep playing Campbell, Carlos Narvaez and Mayer, knowing that they’ll have ups and downs. Like Story, Campbell has struggled in May, but his slump feels like a guy figuring things out, not a guy out of gas. Call up Roman Anthony and get him in the lineup. Every time I feel it’s time to make Ceddanne Rafaela a fourth outfielder/defensive replacement, he has a game like Wednesday (3 for 5 with a home run) and shows a glimpse of what he can be with just a dash of plate discipline, but I still feel like Anthony is a better everyday option. In Triple-A Worcester, he’s simply treading water and biding his time.

Jarren Duran and Wilyer Abreu could be cornerstones of the rebuild, but to make room for Anthony, one of them likely needs to go, and I bet either could fetch a starting pitcher who has the ability to consistently go more than five mediocre innings. Brayan Bello and Hunter Dobbins, get more efficient with your pitches so you can stop stress testing the bullpen. Walker Buehler and Lucas Giolito are what they are, pitchers working their way back from injury who might not ever be 100% this season. One start might be spectacular, and the next one, you watch through fingers covering your eyes.

It would be nice to sit by the radio, or phone as is the more likely the case these days, and listen to a game featuring a Red Sox team in a pennant race. But unless everyone on this team suddenly goes on a four-month heater, that’s not gonna be the Summer of ’25.