As the Red Sox look ahead to the trade deadline, they must remember to ignore recent history

They need to do more and show more effort between now and the trade deadline (July 30) to prove they are worth the organization deviating from its carefully plotted sustainability trajectory, whether or not you approve of that trajectory. (For the record, I don’t.)

To say that this season is different is a matter of feelings rather than facts.

It’s shocking how short memories are. Last year, the Sox had their best season performance, nine games over .500 on July 28 and 1.5 games out of the third wild card. They finished last at 78-82 for the second straight season after former baseball general manager Chaim Bloom called the team underdogs, citing their playoff chances of less than 25 percent, as justification for moving to the deadline.

In 2022, the Sox posted a season-high 11 games over .500 on June 26 and 10 games over on July 4 while in possession of the first wild card. That team fell to 52-52 at the Aug. 2 trade deadline and navigated a conflicting and convoluted deadline that saw them simultaneously try to add (Tommy Pham, Eric Hosmer and Reese McGuire) and sell (Christian Vasquez) while retaining pending free agents Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez and Nathan Eovaldi. They finished last in the American League East.

Sure, manager Alex Cora and others who are calling for an increase in the current club’s roster in August will argue that if baseball operations had been more aggressive, the results would have been different. I disagree. It was as if the water had found its level.

The Red Sox, the year’s hot rods, have been getting some fresh air on the basepaths and are rolling on a quality oval at the Fenway 500. For most of the season, they have struggled to escape the gravitational pull of mediocrity, hovering around .500. The Sox were 35-35 through their first 70 games before going on a stretch in which they won eight of nine to reach a season-high seven games over .500 (43-36) on June 24.

And people started losing perspective. You want to base your decisions on an attractive summer snapshot of the Sox where we got to see their good side?

It makes sense for Cora, in the final year of his contract, to play public policy to get reinforcements. Fighting for his players to pressure Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow and the owners to commit to helping this team is the right thing to do in his role. That doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do for the organization.

It’s a stretch for people like Ken Rosenthal, a noted baseball journalist, to imply that the Sox are “obligated” to help this current crop of talent and to declare that if the Sox owners, led by principal owner John Henry (who also owns the Globe), don’t “honor what their players and manager have done … then shame on them.”

Did I miss that Sox team transformed into the 1998 Yankees during the Celtics Duck Boats parade?

The Red Sox entered Tuesday’s road series against the Marlins with a 44-39 record, 1½ games out of the third wild card. The Astros, who have made the playoffs for seven straight games, were as close to the Red Sox as the Sox are to the Kansas City Royals, who own the third wild card. The playoff odds had the Sox at 31.8 percent via Fangraphs and 25.6 percent, according to Baseball Reference.

So, excuse me, Breslow, or anyone else who is taking a wait-and-see approach with this team between now and the deadline. The priority internally remains executing the Sox’ plan, not accelerating it.

To be as clear as Dwight Evans, the Sox shouldn’t automatically sit on the sidelines. If Breslow has the opportunity to significantly improve the team now and beyond, he should part ways with some of his prized prospects and jump at the chance.

If there’s a young starting pitcher available like 25-year-old White Sox starting pitcher Garrett Crochet or 26-year-old Marlins left-hander Jesus Luzardo, who was recently placed on injured reserve with a back injury and is expected to miss more than a month, take him.

The Sox have a surplus of promising prospects in the infield and outfield. Distillation time is near. The prospect pools are comparable to major league hitters. If you get a hit 3 out of 10 times, you’re doing very well.

But the current Sox team hasn’t shown enough staying power to justify wasting prospect balls on rentals.

Sox starting pitchers posted a 5.02 ERA in June, which ranked 25th, and that number has increased each month. The Sox led MLB in starting ERA in April (2.07). In May, it jumped to 4.49, also 25th.

Despite the broken promises, this season was never more than a replacement season. Breslow said he hired a firm to conduct an audit of the organization.

Well, the whole season feels like a giant audit. The cerebral Breslow is in full information assimilation mode. He will formulate his plan for moving forward with the information – that is, the financial metrics – from the owners.

For those who are more motivated, here is a story from last season.

The Angels decided to go all-in and upgrade their “contending” team. They traded two of the top three prospects for White Sox pitchers Reynaldo Lopez and Lucas Giolito, who was signed by the Red Sox but is out for this season after undergoing surgery to repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament.

The Angels began August with a seven-game losing streak, Ohtani tore his lumbar collateral ligament on Aug. 23, and the Angels finished 73-89.

This Sox team needs to show more courage to shake things up and change the minds of the decision-makers in the organization. In the meantime, it’s just more of the same.

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Christopher L. Gasper is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @cgasper and on Instagram @cgaspersports.