Why can’t the Red Sox win any one-run games?

That question sums up the Red Sox’s season so far, which has been a massive disappointment largely because the club has come up short in so many close games. Entering Saturday the Red Sox were 6-17 in one-run games, which is the most such losses of any team in baseball, accounting for nearly half of the club’s total 35 losses.

Had the club flipped a few of those the other way, the Red Sox could easily be in playoff position right now instead of 10.5 games out of first place in the AL East.

How does this keep happening, and who is most to blame? Is it an offensive issue? A symptom of poor pitching and defense?

As with everything else in life the truth is more complex, but a game-by-game analysis shows there are a couple of problems that repeatedly come up and, if corrected, could help the Red Sox start coming out on top.

Poor situational hitting

If you wanted to point the finger at one specific problem, this would be it. In 12 of Boston’s 17 one-run losses the offense has either completely no-showed or repeatedly fallen short in key spots.

The tone was set right out of the gate on Opening Weekend when the Red Sox lost back-to-back one-run games in Texas in which they collectively went 1 for 24 with runners in scoring position while stranding 20 men on base. All it would have taken was maybe one hit in each game to flip the outcome, but the offense just couldn’t deliver.

Since then, the Red Sox have laid one egg after another. Some examples:

April 9: Scored one run in the bottom of the first and then nothing the rest of the way in a 2-1 loss to the Blue Jays in 11 innings.

April 24: Lost 4-3 at home to the Mariners after going 3 for 13 with runners in scoring position and stranding 12.

May 9: Played the Royals scoreless into the 11th inning, lose 2-1 in 12 after going 0 for 12 with runners in scoring position.

June 3: Came up empty in the bottom of the 10th and went 1 for 13 with runners in scoring position overall in a 4-3 loss to the Angels.

Even in games where the Red Sox have scored a few runs there have been times where the offense has stalled and shut down for crucial stretches. The most notable example came on April 30, when the Red Sox took a 6-0 lead over the Blue Jays into the sixth but came up empty down the stretch as Toronto stormed back to pick up a shocking 7-6 win in 10 innings. In that game and so many others, a couple more hits could have made all the difference.

Bullpen collapses

These losses are usually the most memorable — and painful — and the Red Sox have had their fair share.

Seven of the 17 losses can be attributed in some way to a bullpen meltdown, and the worst by far was the aforementioned loss to the Blue Jays on April 30. That game should have been in the bag, but Garrett Whitlock gave up a game-tying three-run home run in the seventh before the Blue Jays walked it off against Justin Slaten in the 10th. The other big one was on May 13 in Detroit, when Greg Weissert gave up two leads in extra innings including a walk-off three-run shot by Javy Baez.

Whitlock and Slaten have had a couple of other tough ones too. Both allowed two runs late in the club’s 5-4 loss at home to the Twins on May 4, and in a May 26 loss to the Brewers Whitlock loaded the bases and gave up a run in the bottom of the eighth of what ended up being a 3-2 defeat.

Aroldis Chapman, who has generally been excellent this season, has endured some costly missteps as well. The closer gave up a leadoff walk and eventually the walk-off single in the ninth against the White Sox on April 12, and on May 14 he gave up another leadoff walk that eventually led to a walk-off single in a loss to the Tigers.

But it’s also worth mentioning that while the bullpen has stumbled from time to time, the group has often been responsible for so many games being decided

by one run in the first place. The best example happened earlier this week on June 2 against the Angels, when the Red Sox bullpen allowed just one run over eight innings and gave the club a fighting chance in what wound up being a 7-6 loss.

Failed comebacks

Sometimes this has gone hand-in-hand with the poor situational hitting, but in six of the 17 losses the Red Sox were the last team to score but wound up falling one run short.

On March 29 the Red Sox trailed the Rangers 4-2 entering the top of the eighth. Carlos Narvaez came through with an RBI single, but the club went 1-2-3 in the ninth to lose 4-3. Narvaez came up big again on April 24 when he led off the bottom of the eighth with a solo shot to make it 4-3 Seattle. But that was essentially all the Red Sox could muster, with the club going 1-2-3 afterwards and then squandering a two-out walk in the ninth.

On May 3 the Red Sox scored twice in the seventh to cut Minnesota’s lead to 4-3 before stranding the tying run at second in both the eighth and ninth innings. Then the big one came Monday when the Red Sox rallied from being down 6-0 and eventually cut the Angels lead to 7-6 on Ceddanne Rafaela’s leadoff solo home run in the eighth. The Angels went on to retire the last six Red Sox batters afterwards to close out the game.

Poor defense

The Red Sox defense hasn’t been good this season — the club leads all of MLB with 54 errors — but defensive miscues haven’t played as large a role in Boston’s close losses as you might think.

Boston has only committed two or more errors in three of their 17 one-run losses, and there are only four games where poor defense has meaningfully contributed to an eventual one-run loss. Overall the Red Sox have committed two or more errors in 16 games, going 6-10 in those instances, and usually when the team lays an egg the result has been a much more convincing defeat.

The most notable defense-enabled loss came this past Wednesday, when the Red Sox committed four errors against the Angels, including one in the 10th inning that contributed to Los Angeles eventually scoring the game-winning run. Another lowlight came on May 14 in Detroit, when a Connor Wong error allowed the go-ahead runner to reach third and eventually score on Justyn-Henry Malloy’s walk-off single.

Admittedly this is an imperfect analysis. Errors only account for the most glaring defensive mistakes and less obvious miscues like missing the cutoff man or throwing to the wrong base don’t show up in the box score but can be just as impactful within a game. Clearly defense is a problem the Red Sox need to work out, but as far as explaining the club’s one-run woes, it’s not necessarily at the top of the list.

Youth and inexperience

While those four issues are the practical explanations for how the Red Sox keep losing one-run games, the primary underlying cause has been the team’s collective youth.

Of the team’s nine primary position players, six have three or fewer years of service time, including two rookies (Kristian Campbell and Carlos Narvaez) and two second-year players (Wilyer Abreu, Ceddanne Rafaela). Two players intended to anchor the heart of the order — Alex Bregman and Triston Casas — are also out injured, and their replacements have either been rookies (Marcelo Mayer) or guys who would ideally come off the bench (Romy Gonzalez, Abraham Toro).

That inexperience has repeatedly been cited by manager Alex Cora and the players themselves when asked about all the one-run losses, though not everyone necessarily views it as a negative.

“Personally I think it says we’re a really really good team and we’ve been in a lot of games, but we’ve just got to get over that hump,” outfielder Jarren Duran said after this past Monday’s loss to the Angels. “We’ve got a lot of young guys that are just learning to compete at this level.”

“I know we’re going to hit our stride eventually where those guys figure it out, because they’re figuring it out at the big league level,” he continued later. “These guys are learning every single day, it’s only a matter of time before it clicks for them.”

The glass half-full view is that right now the Red Sox are taking their lumps, but at some point the club will flip a switch and turn into the contender everyone thought they could be all along. Look at the Detroit Tigers, they were practically toast as late in the season as mid-August last year before going on a run to make the playoffs. Now they have the best record in baseball.

Could the Red Sox pull off something similar?

Maybe, but the less optimistic view is that by the time the Red Sox get their act together and learn how to win, it might already be too late.