The Red Sox sound about as hopeless as any team in baseball right now as the locker room begins to turn on each other.

After trying to put a positive spin on things and firing their stud manager, Alex Cora, Boston looked lost this past weekend against the Houston Astros, mustering just seven runs in a three-game set against a team ranked dead last in most major pitching categories.

Veteran first baseman Willson Contreras had some interesting comments regarding life without their former manager and the bevy of young players on the roster.

“It’s different with Alex not here,” Contreras said, according to MassLive. “But after Cora got fired, the guys got loose a little more because I feel like the tension was gone…That’s what I felt. That’s my own opinion. When Alex wasn’t in the dugout (anymore), the team was kinda like loose. But that doesn’t matter. We have to play better. We have to find consistency. We have to get better, we have to be better.”

Contreras added that it “probably doesn’t help that the lineup has a number of young players who don’t have much experience in dealing with slumps.”

This certainly appeared to set off one of those young players, second baseman Marcelo Mayer.

“To me, that’s just kind of an excuse: blame the young guys,” Mayer said in response to Contreras. “But at the end of the day, we’re all playing baseball, we’re all pros. We all know what we need to do. I don’t think we’re doing a good job with runners in scoring position. When you don’t do that, you don’t score runs.

After losing two of three to the Astros and a lackadaisical offensive performance that included going 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position and stranding 13 on Sunday, the Red Sox are now 13-21.