Red Sox’ playoff dream might be dead, but maybe this is better

COMMENTARY

After a weekend like that one, staring at a week like this one, it’s hard not to feel this enjoyable Red Sox ride has begun its final approach to its logical conclusion.

Perhaps, remembering our winter angst about the team’s apparent priorities, that’s for the best.

In the immediate, though, this feeling isn’t new. When Boston was swept by the Dodgers after the All-Star break, they led in all three games. They tread water against the Yankees and Houston. Won a couple in Baltimore. Have looked in the conversation against just about everyone.

That, alas, doesn’t equal October. And being up into the sixth inning on Friday and Sunday, and a couple hits away on Saturday, doesn’t change that Arizona, the better team, repeatedly found the gas and left the young upstart in their taillights.

“We’re still in a good position. We’re still well into the race,” Rafael Devers told reporters on Sunday, in the afterglow of home run No. 200. “We just need to turn the page and be ready for the next series and win some more games. There’s still plenty of more games remaining in the season.”

True: 33 for the 67-62 Red Sox. Their best in a frame that long came before the All-Star break, into which they surged on a 22-11 stretch. Repeating that would mean 89 wins.

Feels like it should be enough with three wild cards per league, but a 4.5-game hole means both Kansas City and Minnesota (tied at 72-58) can match that with barely .500 baseball.

Feels a touch terminal after another bad series at home. The Sox are 29-35 at Fenway and closing on their first back-to-back full seasons with losing records at home since 1965-66.

The Globe’s Alex Speier did some good rooting around for the why of Boston’s Fenway struggles. There’s no easy answers, but “they strike out too much” and “they make too many errors” are safe catchalls no matter the venue.

Against the torrid Diamondbacks, the issues were simpler. Brayan Bello walked four batters on Friday — two immediately after back-to-back singles, and the last followed by three straight hits in the game-turning sixth. Kutter Crawford was better Saturday, but Lucas Sims and Brennan Bernardino walked four (plus a wild pitch) in a two-run seventh.

Sims had a walk problem in Cincinnati. As noted by The Ringer’s Brian Barrett, he’s 180th of 199 relievers in walk rate since the trading deadline.

On Sunday, Tanner Houck walked four, all in his last three innings. Three of them scored, the last on Eugenio Suárez’s second home run of the series and the capper to a 10-RBI weekend.

“With men on in scoring position, he might not want to throw that, but I was ready for that breaking ball,” Suárez told Diamondbacks TV on Sunday, “and he threw it right there in the middle.”

The homers are a wide-reaching problem, of course. Sox pitchers have allowed 40 in August, worst in the sport. Suárez’s coming on a first-pitch breaking ball — Houck’s favorite offering overall, and one of only two (with the sinker) Houck throws first pitch to righties — led me to wonder whether there’s some adaptation and hunting being done by opposing hitters.

Results are inconclusive, but notable. The Red Sox have allowed 13 first-pitch homers in August, more than a third of their 31 all season and a jump beyond the staff’s general struggles. Four have come off Nick Pivetta, among eight first-pitch homers all season — tied for the second-worst total in the majors.

Most, though, have been on Pivetta’s secondary stuff, with just two on the fastball he throws nearly half the time. Houck’s other first-pitch homer this month, in Texas, came on a bad splitter. Gunnar Henderson got Bello in Baltimore to end five-plus no-hit innings. Could be nothing.

Whatever it is, the pitching feels at a low ebb staring down what’s essentially five games against Toronto, with just three remaining off days — the last on Sept. 26, when only a series with the Rays to go.

Triston Casas has come back from injury hot. Trevor Story looks like he might reappear before years end. It’s a pity neither can offer five-plus innings once a week.

And yet, there’s no shame in this group, in this year, ending on Sept. 29. Their best case in February didn’t feel much beyond this, and that was before the Lucas Giolito and Garrett Whitlock and Casas and Story absences we all know by heart.

This season was something where it appeared there was nothing. Something is coming from within, even if a year of successes within the system also will include another Marcelo Mayer season done too soon.

As I noted above, maybe that’s for the best. I’m not convinced anything short of thousands of empty seats and tanking NESN ad rates will create motivation to truly change course within the offices on Jersey Street . . . a warm night at the park is still a draw, no matter how sour anyone tries to act about it.

Sox attendance is essentially flat this year, 11th in the majors at 33,022 per game. They’ve had to sell in a way they haven’t in a long time, but they have managed, and the prices to those who don’t watch closely still make your eyes water.

A playoff appearance after breaking the promise of “full throttle” always felt a little off, even knowing that the days atop the payroll pile are likely gone forever. This, though? They only need a little more. Or, perhaps, we jump ahead to make it “they only needed a little more.”

Enjoy Danny Jansen Day. Enjoy whatever time this group has left. Enjoy that maybe, despite all seeming so lost so recently, the best days really are still to come.