Confidence among Red Sox fans has cratered

Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse, a survey of fans across MLB. Each week, we send 30 polls to plugged in fans from each team. Red Sox fans, sign up HERE to join FanPulse.

Fan Confidence is Cratering

As we always have to mention with these polls, the timing can be a little off and sometimes momentum can change ever so slightly from the time people respond to the time we are able to publish. I’m not sure so much would change this time around, to be fair, but it should be noted that the Red Sox have won their last two games. That said, they’d lost five of their previous six to start their homestand and things were looking fairly bleak. With that in mind, confidence in the team fell to a season-low 47 percent. Their previous low was 52 percent, and the current mark is the fifth lowest among the entire league.

While confidence in the team is extremely low right now, people don’t seem to be taking things out on the manager. It’s always hard for me to determine just how much blame and/or credit should be given to the manager. On the one hand, players play. It’s as simple as that. On the other hand, the manager’s job is to put players in the best position to succeed. If they don’t, was it because of the player or the position they were put into by their manager? I legitimately don’t know! Respondents to our poll feel Cora is not much to blame, though, with the confidence in him staying mostly steady at 74 percent. That is his lowest rating of the year, but it’s only one percentage point lower than last week and he’s been within ten percentage points of this rating for the last four weeks.

Do you like the commish?

This is...surprising? I feel like commissioners are generally like umpires/referees for fans in that they generally have an overwhelmingly negative reputation, so I’m surprised Manfred’s approval rating is right around 50 percent. Personally, I am not wild about a commissioner who can’t stop complaining about the sport he helps run, but that’s just me.