Unless something dramatically changes, the Boston Red Sox are heading towards their third last place finish in four seasons. Boston has come out of the All-Star break looking absolutely horrible and they have shown almost no signs of life. It is an abysmal product to have to watch.

Red Sox Nation is frustrated, disgusted and angry. The interesting thing is a lot of their ire isn’t directed entirely at this dog of a team, although more of it probably could be. Nor is all the blame being placed on John Farrell. A lot of this is falling on the front office and quite honestly, it should.

One keeps on getting a sense that Boston is trying so hard to almost reinvent the wheel and being ahead of every other team when it comes to statistics. They try to act like they are the smartest team around. In the meantime, they have fallen so far behind the rest of the MLB and it shows in how outplayed this team is every single night.

A change needs to happen. I don’t doubt that Ben Cherington is trying but some of these decisions that have been made over the last year or so have been absolutely baffling.

Why lowball Jon Lester in the first place? So now, the team might be paying Cole Hamels a lot more than they would have paid Lester. What on earth was the point in that?

Why not go out and get an ace type? It didn’t have to be a Max Scherzer but it could have easily been a James Shields. Maybe he wouldn’t pitch like an ace in Fenway Park, but he would give off the aura of one and that could have been very valuable. He could have taken a lot of the pressure and it would let the other starting pitchers grow in their roles. However, Boston showed almost no interest in Shields when he was available.

Why not give Andrew Miller what he wanted? If the starting pitching isn’t going to be great, work on it from the back end and get a lockdown bullpen. Miller, Junichi Tazawa and Koji Uehara would probably get the job done nicely and it is tolerable knowing the starting pitcher will contribute six innings and the bullpen will take care of the rest.

There is something fundamentally wrong with this franchise and it all starts in the front office. The owners need to stop worrying about ratings and let the baseball people do their jobs. If that means a head of baseball operations, that’s fine. The owners might be a lot happier having a person like that making player decisions than facing Red Sox fans right now.

Trust me, it isn’t very pretty.

Carter Roane is a Boston Red Sox writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter@CarterGRoane, “Like”him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.