At the start of the season, it seemed fair to wonder whether the back of the Red Sox rotation would struggle. But few would have anticipated the across-the-board difficulties of the starting staff in the season’s initial two weeks, something that has played a significant factor in the team’s second straight horrible performance to open the year.

The latest sub-standard outing came on Friday against the Yankees, as Clay Buchholz pitched well for much of the day but, by his estimation, made five mistakes, all of them over the middle of the plate, all of them getting punished. The right-hander matched a career-high by allowing five home runs in the game, the key component of a 6-2 loss. More alarming for the Red Sox, it wasn’t even his worst outing of the year.

Buchholz gave up seven runs in four innings against the Tigers in his first start of 2012. In his next outing against the Rays, he nearly saw the game get away from him in a four-run first but then recovered to pitch seven innings. Still, he allowed five runs that game. And then, of course, there was Friday, when the Yankees took him deep five times.

In Buchholz’s favor, each of the five blasts was of the solo variety, thus limiting the damage to six runs (five earned). Even so, he failed to execute with the consistency needed to shut down his opponent.

“Against a good hitting team like that, that's stuff we can't do,” said catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia. “It's like throwing David [Ortiz] a fastball middle-in. It's dangerous. He's still finding it a little bit. His last start he had to work. Today he had to work. It's all falling into place little by little. You just have to be patient. I think he'll be OK.”

As Saltalamacchia suggested, Buchholz’s struggles on Friday did not occur in isolation. A pitcher who was expected to give the Sox consistent quality starts has done precisely the opposite.

Buchholz has allowed five or more earned runs in all three of his starts this year. He is one of just three pitchers in the majors (joining Tim Lincecum of the Giants and Francisco Liriano of the Twins) to do so, in what represents a dramatic career departure.

In 2010-11, Buchholz made 42 starts and allowed five or more earned runs in four games (9.5 percent). This year, in just three starts, he’s nearly matched that number. It marks the first time he’s ever allowed five-plus earned runs in three straight starts.

Worse for the Red Sox, Buchholz has not been alone in his struggles. In 13 games, the Sox have gotten just five quality starts to date this season, tied for 22nd in the majors. Jon Lester and Josh Beckett each have delivered two of those with Daniel Bard claiming the only other one; neither Buchholz nor Felix Doubront has given the Sox a single outing that has lived up the standard for a quality start (six or more innings, three or fewer runs).

On the other hand, the Sox are getting terrible starts with greater frequency than any other team in the majors. On six occasions, a Sox starter has allowed five or more runs, tied with the Twins for the most in the majors.

The result? As a group, Sox starters have a 2-7 record and a 6.09 ERA that ranks second-to-last in the majors. For a group that is viewed as having terrific stuff, the outcomes have been both puzzling and costly in the early going.

“It's frustrating, and I know for them it's frustrating too. They're too good not to go out there and dominate. All of them have four plus pitches that can dominate this league,” said Saltalamacchia. “These guys are good. There's no doubt about it. You can't judge a guy off a couple of outings.”

Pitching coach Bob McClure echoed that sentiment.

“I expect that we’ll definitely go on a run of quality starts. I think it will even out,” he said. “The sooner the better, but they’re all very capable and I think they will.”

Indeed, manager Bobby Valentine remains convinced that he has seen the raw ingredients for success, but that the recipe for his starting staff remains just slightly off, even as he acknowledged the role that the starters’ struggles has played in the team’s overall performance.

“That has something to do with the record too,” said Valentine. “But we’ve been in most games. Our starting pitching has allowed us to be in all but two games of the few that we’ve played so far. That’s all we ask. Just give us a chance.

“It’s an amazing, you know, [16]-day sample. You look around baseball, There’s a few of those things that are just inexplicable right now. Maybe the long season will have it all even out,” he continued. “I think our starting pitching has been good with bad innings. And it’s similar to our bullpen. It’s been good with bad innings. When you don’t have a large number of innings to offset the bad one then the numbers are really inflated, the runs per and the ERA and all those things.”

Yet as certain measures of the team’s starting performance inflate, the effect has undoubtedly been deflating. A team cannot go through life with a six-plus ERA from its starting staff and hope to excel.

That was a lesson reinforced quite painfully for the Sox last September, when the starters had a collective 7.08 ERA that represented the single biggest factor in the team’s 7-20 collapse. So far in 2012, the results have been strikingly similar.

The development was one that the team could ill-afford in 2011 and that it cannot stomach for much more of 2012. Armed with a 4-9 record after four straight home losses, the need for improvement is reaching the critical stage.

“I'm not going to spend the whole season thinking about the talent that we got. We have to start winning games,” said David Ortiz. “I know that in everybody's mind it's the beginning of the season, but what is it going to take, until July for us to start winning? We need to step up, do something different and make things happen.”