Ortiz: 'We're getting our asses beat'

In the despondent visitor's clubhouse at Progressive Field on Friday night, the most famous player on the Boston Red Sox - maybe in the franchise's history - tried to go unnoticed.

It didn't work.

David Ortiz, like so many others, wanted to avoid the media after a 6-0 loss to the Cleveland Indians plopped the Red Sox into a two-game hole in the best-of-five ALDS matchup. But, being David Ortiz, that wasn't happening. A team official asked him if he would accommodate the reporters and take some questions.

So, as he braced for what was potentially the penultimate postgame scrum of his career, Ortiz wasn't in the best of moods. The reporters noticed.

"Should I be happy? We're getting our asses beat," Ortiz said, according to MLB.com's Ian Browne. "Nothing to celebrate."

Ortiz has always told it like it is, so why stop now?

This group ain't got nothing to celebrate, nor any reasons for optimism. As Dustin Pedroia noted following Friday's defeat, everything that made the Red Sox, well, the Red Sox during the regular season - specifically, their tenacious offense - has been missing through the first two games of the ALDS.

It's a two-game sample, which is hardly a sample at all. But this is a best-of-five series. The margin for error is narrower than the concourses at Fenway Park.

In addition to their offensive woes, the Red Sox have also received two rough pitching performances from their regular-season aces - one of whom is considered a top contender for the 2016 Cy Young award, and one of whom already has a Cy Young award.

On Thursday, Rick Porcello served up three home runs to an Indians lineup with, at best, middling pop, and wasn't able to make it out of the fifth. In 33 regular-season starts, Porcello never once failed to get through five innings.

The next day, David Price failed to make good on his claim that he was saving all his postseason wins for Boston, as the 31-year-old stumbled through another ghastly playoff start that did nothing to dispel his reputation as an October choke-artist. He didn't even make it out of the fourth.

Most discouraging of all, though, is that Papi hasn't been been Papi, either.

His legacy is built largely around his uncanny, downright preternatural ability to hit when it matters most, but Ortiz has been eerily human over the last couple games. Against the Indians, the dude with the career .290/.403/.545 line in the postseason is 1-for-8 (.125).

So what is it, then, Papi? Are the Indians simply outplaying you guys, or what?

"It's part of the game, man, but I know we're better than that," said Ortiz.

"(We've) just got to come and play better."

If they can't do that Sunday in Game 3, for Papi, at least, there is no tomorrow.