BOSTON -- It was the kind of performance that causes the more impatient among us to call for a general manager's head, even if he has a championship on his resume: star players allowed to walk over money, trades and signings that don't pan out.
Wait a second. Are we talking Peter Chiarelli being fired as general manager by the Bruins over at the Garden Wednesday afternoon, or the Boston Red Sox making Ben Cherington squirm uncomfortably in Fenway Park after another member of the rebooted starting rotation took a header?
Even after Wednesday's 10-5 loss to the Washington Nationals, no one is holding a referendum on the competence of Cherington, not with the team having won six of its first nine games and all three series it has played to date.
But the past few days have given the critics of the way Cherington constructed the rotation in the wake of Jon Lester's departure more ammunition than anyone would wish. Never mind the talk of who's No. 1: This week, the conversation has deteriorated into who can last past the fifth inning.
Not Clay Buchholz, who was lit up for 10 runs (9 earned) in 3 1/3 innings Sunday night in New York.
Not Justin Masterson, who was charged with 7 runs in 4 2/3 innings Tuesday night in Fenway, a game the Nats gave away with an epic defensive meltdown.
And certainly not Wade Miley, the left-hander admired for working fast but gone even faster, knocked out in the third inning after a yield of seven runs.
If you're scoring at home, that's 23 earned runs in 10 1/3 innings, an earned run average of 18.10. That's not acceptable as a Wonderlic score for an aspiring NFL quarterback, and it certainly doesn't make the grade for a team aspiring to be a contender.
Mookie Betts and his Marvel Comics exploits have deflected attention. So has a Sox offense that came into Wednesday afternoon's matinee averaging better than six runs a game, their 51 runs the second most runs they've ever scored through the first eight games of a season.
But it was impossible to miss how the Nats rattled balls all over the yard Wednesday -- six extra-base hits in the first three innings alone, seven overall.
Miley's people: Bryce Harper's double and Ryan Zimmerman's triple gave the Nats a 2-0 lead in the first. The eruption came in the third: Home run by Ian Desmond, single, walk, walk, three-run double by Nats catcher Wilson Ramos. That was all for Miley. For good measure, Dan Uggla and Michael Taylpor followed with back-to-back doubles off reliever Anthony Varvaro.
A two-run home run by Tyler Moore off Robbie Ross in the seventh finished off Washington's scoring.
Too much to overcome: Hanley Ramirez hit his fourth home run, a fierce home run lined into the Monster seats, Mike Napoli tripled and scored, Brock Holt doubled in a run, and Dustin Pedroia doubled and scored, but the Sox never really threatened.
No Papi, Panda: David Ortiz and Pablo Sandoval were both given the day off.