[Strike_King]

Jackie MacMullin wrote a great article on the Sox clubhouse. Real good read: Underachieving Boston Red Sox flunked chemistry - ESPN Boston

Unlikable Red Sox flunked chemistry
Somehow the team became what it once abhorred -- arrogant, complacent and entitled
While the Rays were young, hungry and edgy, the Red Sox were arrogant, complacent and, worst of all, entitled.

They took their baseball gifts for granted, and when those gifts abandoned them, as they almost always do during a long baseball season, they were either too lazy or too cocksure to recognize what was required of them to maintain the consistency that is so vital in baseball.
Ellsbury is a 2007 alum and an MVP candidate, a magnificent player with the brightest future of them all. His teammates like and admire him, but he keeps to himself, confides only in Jed Lowrie.

Can you blame him? His teammate two or three lockers to his left continued, as recently as two months ago, to publicly question Ellsbury's decision to retreat to Arizona last summer for treatment for broken ribs. Kevin Youkilis has always been a hot button. On occasion, his intensity and his honesty were his biggest assets, but not this season. The injured Youkilis showed up every day the way he wanted Ellsbury to, but he turned so sour and cynical that his carping and insistence on inserting himself into other people's affairs turned him into a detriment.