Poll: Has the clock struck midnight on Red Sox in 2023 season?

It's the poll question that keeps on giving.

I guess that's one of the positives of following a wildly erratic baseball team, that I can ask basically the same question in the form of the Drive Poll at many different junctures throughout the season.

One minute, they look like a team capable of "catching lightning in a bottle" and contending. Then, as quickly as they turned it on, they hit the skids and drop a few series in a row.

So is life for the Boston Red Sox in 2023, which in all likelihood means a year without a postseason berth.

Red Sox math can take many forms at this point on the calendar. There's the common practice of calculating a team's magic number, which is done using the following formula: games in a season plus one, minus losses by the 2nd-place team in the division. For the Sox, their magic number to make the playoffs is a whopping 45, while the number to be eliminated is 18. I think that paints a fairly descriptive picture of what they're up against.

Or, you could take Tom Caron's ratio, which simply places the amount of games back next to the amount of weeks remaining in the season. Boston is 5.5 games back of HOU and TEX for the 3rd Wild Card with five weeks left in the season. By that metric, they're toast, as their deficit has exceeded the remaining number of weeks.

Then, there's Sully's math which he unveiled yesterday on The Morning Roast, with Brian arguing that based on his calculations, the Red Sox have eight more losses to spare the rest of the way. Of course, that number is now seven after an ugly showing last night at Fenway.

However you do the math, is time up on the Sox in 2023?