Farrell stays calm amid storm

ATLANTA -- When the Red Sox mowed through the competition en route to a World Series championship last year, manager John Farrell never called a formal team meeting. The same is true this season, even as his team took the field with a 10-game losing streak Monday.

Instead, Farrell prefers to speak to players on a more individual basis during scouting meetings, etc.

"We've talked individually. There have been a few situations that have come up as it relates to them and us," said Farrell. "It would be different if it felt like the effort or the competitiveness wasn't there. And yet we all see it. We all see that competitive at-bats are being had.

"Guys are going about their work in a similar fashion whether we were 10-0 in this stretch vs. 0-10. So to turn over tables and to throw [stuff] against the wall, that's not where we are. This is a matter of showing as much stability and continuity as we can and belief and trust in our process and have confidence in the players that we have. We collectively need to get out of this rather than some rant and rage of a meeting."

The lack of timely hitting continues to be prominent in the team's struggles.

"We've got some situations where we haven't executed or we haven't gotten a big hit. I think we're hitting .210 with runners in scoring position in this stretch," said Farrell. "That's historically low for any stretch of games. I know this -- guys do want to be the guy in certain spots. Does that tend to [make them] come out of their approach? Possibly. But I don't know if you'd be human if you weren't wanting to kind of do something a little bit more to execute in a certain situation. execute to the best of our abilities."