I find myself going back-and-forth a bit on the season. The team has been playing really poorly, but injuries have totally decimated the pitching staff, and the lineup has been injured, as well as none of the gambles really working out. Dalbec stinks, Franchy is a pumpkin, Kike has been injured/bad, Verdugo is okay but not a reliable cornerstone, JBJ is still a black hole, etc.
No team is going to be able to sustain the level of injuries that the Sox have had and still be in contention. At the same time; while last season Bloom and the front office looked like geniuses with many of their bargain-bin moves really panning out (Kike being our best player, Renfrow mashing, Schwarber being a beast after the deadline, Pivetta delivering, Whitlock being lights-out) this season has really evened things out. Wacha and Hill were both injury risks for different reasons (Wacha hadn't thrown a full season of innings since 2017, Hill was 42) and Paxton obviously was a known injury issue. There has been no Garrett Whitlock to boost the bullpen forward, and the result has been a lot of JAGs being JAGs.
It's easy to blame the injuries but at the same time, the team was not constructed at all to handle any injuries, especially for games like this past series with Devers on the IL, where you take him (and Story, who has also been a disappointment) out of the lineup and it looks like a lineup that would struggle to hit in AAA. The injuries have highlighted a lot of weaknesses within the team, and I wonder how quickly the roster can be altered to increase depth and avoid simply gambling on health, or gambling that guys like Kike are going to be 5 WAR players.