John Henry is having a very good week.

Joe Biden heeded the will of his newspaper and quit the presidential race.

PGA Tour darling Xander Schauffele won The Open Championship Sunday.

And the Red Sox dropped four straight coming out of the All-Star break ahead of Tuesday night’s game in Colorado.

Golf has the honor on Jersey Street.

The success of Scottie Scheffler and Schauffele on the PGA Tour is a crucial weapon in its battle against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the sport’s future. Those two golfers have won 3 of this year’s 4 major championships. Each could medal for Team USA during the Paris Olympics.

The timing of the Red Sox season-long losing streak couldn’t have been any better for ownership. The last thing John Henry Kissinger needs is for the Red Sox to become a distraction all summer. Team Henry, Grousbeck & Friends needs all the help it can get on the back nine as their hoped-for LIV/PGA Tour merger languishes in a pot bunker of player discord and diverse agendas.

The Red Sox transformed into the 1978 Yankees for the month before the All-Star Game. Boston went 20-8. The Sox were 14 games out June 14. They cut that gap to just 4.5 games a week ago before Jarren Duran won All-Star Game MVP honors.

The Sox have fallen to 2 games out of the final wildcard as of Tuesday.

Their bullpen has crashed like a 6-year-old who just downed a Snickers bar and 2 glasses of cherry Kool-Aid. It has fallen face-first on the couch. With just a bit of a drool dripping from a corner of the mouth.

If the Red Sox are going to make a push to win this season, why wait until July 30? Why not deal now? Or last week? It’s never too early to add pitching or right-handed hitting.

Far more important than pedestrian player moves at the deadline, Boston let Alex Cora begin 2024 without an extension. Cora has been at his best this season, trash cans notwithstanding. I’ve never been a big Cora fan. He’s forever a cheater. But he connects with 2024 players, especially the Red Sox Latin core, as well as any manager in baseball. Fans (mostly) love him. State Run Media remains infatuated. And he knows the game even when he’s not stealing signs.

The Red Sox cannot be taken seriously until they resolve the Cora problem. Unless the Yankees reach the World Series, Hal Steinbrenner will be happy to blow it all up to give Cora whatever baseball job he wants in the Bronx. Manager, GM, or both.

Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow remains the front man. Breathless talk-show commentary, social media chatter, and dutiful coverage by the credentialed throng remain a buzz with the question: “What will Breslow do at the trade deadline?”

That occurs at 6 p.m. EDT on July 30.

The latest chatter has the Red Sox “nibbling on the edges.” Perhaps buying. Perhaps selling. Perhaps both.

There are some big names likely to move around the trade deadline. None to Boston.

The best the rumor mill can generate for Red Sox is a return of James Paxton

James Paxton.

No wonder I get emails from the Red Sox offering “tickets and a drink” starting at $35.

We’ve been fooled into a narrative that the Red Sox strategy around the trade deadline in recent years remains fixated around which precious prospect they should keep, rather than ownership’s hard and fast fixed budget.

Whatever Breslow can do remains limited by the paywall set by Henry. And Henry won’t even talk about the Red Sox with a reporter from his own newspaper. What makes one think he’ll spend the money necessary to enable any deals of substance? The Red Sox have a 34% chance to make the postseason as of this writing. The price on the Red Sox to miss the playoffs soared from -135 to -210 since Friday.

The Red Sox rest on Henry’s list of priorities somewhere between his wife’s Instagram feed and the wind farm debris washing up on the shore near his Nantucket estate.

The Red Sox fell to 15-26 against playoff teams after they got swept by the Dodgers this past weekend. The games were competitive, at least until Boston’s beleaguered staff gave up a half-dozen home runs Sunday night.

Boston’s once fire-proof bullpen has become fully engulfed.

Monday night, Boston blew a 2-run lead in the 10th and a 1-run lead in the 12th before losing 9-8 in a showdown of the best minor-leaguers in the majors. Boston failed to hold the lead in the 9th and 10th innings during a 7-6 loss to the Dodgers on Saturday in 11 innings. The bullpen erased Nick Pivetta’s outstanding performance on Friday thanks to a grand slam in the 8th in a 4-1 loss.

As Boston’s rotation becomes stretched to its outer limits, the bullpen has broken up upon re-entry after the All-Star break. Given the Red Sox upcoming schedule, the trade deadline might be too late. Perhaps that’s by design.

That’s too bad. The Red Sox have kept us entertained in the weeks following the Celtics title run.

This is the most athletic Red Sox team in our lifetimes. No base is safe. No ball is unreachable. Boston has an all-time low BMI, third base notwithstanding. Once upon a time, Yaz chain-smoked Marlboros in the clubhouse. We’re barely a decade removed from Chicken-and-Beer Gate.

Duran’s resurrection has been divine. His name has creeped into the American League MVP chat. He may find superstardom once the Red Sox Netflix documentary drops next year. Ceddanne Rafaela seamlessly splits time between center and short, shoring up both positions. Connor Wong has gone from Mookie Betts trade throw-in to catcher of the future.

Someday, Tristan Casas will return.

Hopefully, the calvary shows up in time to make it all matter.

Bill Speros (@RealOBF and @BIllSperos) can be reached at bsperos1@gmail.com.