BOSTON -- Franklin Morales said it was a lack of fastball command, and that he paid the price for an inability to locate either his two- or his four-seamer. Bobby Valentine agreed, saying his southpaw’s pitches were running right into the sweet spot of the Yankee bats, which slugged four homers.

But as much as anything the manager or his players explained afterward, the story of the Red Sox’ 6-1 defeat in the first game of Saturday’s day-night doubleheader was told by a scene in the home clubhouse afterward. Lying lengthwise across one of the room’s black leather couches was Clay Buchholz. Lounging on the other was Dustin Pedroia.

And as much as each would’ve presumably loved a reason to get up, it wouldn’t have mattered if they stayed there straight through the nightcap.

After a fifth straight loss, after falling 9½ games back in the division, after being shut down by the inimitable Freddy Garcia, the Sox were a team in dire need of someone — or something — to give them a spark. A key starting pitcher or an offensive firecracker could’ve certainly been that.

But instead, all Buchholz and Pedroia could do was lie down and look into the electronics in their hands as they kicked their feet up, unable to contribute because they’re among the eight potential difference makers on the disabled list on a team where the ill effects of injuries are starting to show.

For the most part, the Sox have survived injuries, particularly those to Carl Crawford and Jacoby Ellsbury, and perhaps one of them will be a spark plug once reinserted after the All-Star break. But Saturday’s lineups and lethargic opener might’ve offered the most obvious indication yet of what’s missing. And what little they can currently do to fix things.

Here they were, in a doubleheader against the first-place — forget rival — Yankees, in early July. They’re still in the thick of the fight for the second wild-card playoff spot. And they’re trying to avoid limping into the awaiting four-day break.

Yet here are the five players who started both ends of that twinbill for Boston: Adrian Gonzalez, David Ortiz, Daniel Nava, Pedro Ciriaco and Mauro Gomez.

The first two would’ve been no surprise, but if you’d have told Sox fans back in spring training that injuries would by this point leave the club so dependent on three players who back then weren’t even on the 40-man roster, those fans would’ve certainly figured their favorite club would be in some serious trouble as it entered the second half of the year.

And they would’ve been right.

It’s troubling that Gomez is hitting fifth and playing third base, a position he never played above A-ball in the minors. It’s troubling that Ciriaco is batting second. It’s troubling that with Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Cody Ross on the bench, the bats around Ortiz were so unintimidating that he was pitched around in three of his four plate appearances in Saturday’s first game. And it’s especially troubling that there’s not much Valentine can do, other than cobble together a lineup, hope it produces results — then wait for the elusive day when he can finally use all the pieces in clubhouse as he’d originally hoped and planned.

“You want to see some continuity,” said the manager, “and with different guys sometimes that continuity is tough to come by and you’re grasping a little more than actually designing.”

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At the time of the team’s most recent playoff appearance, Pedroia, Buchholz, Ellsbury and Jed Lowrie appeared likely to make up a major part of the core that would lead the Red Sox back to the postseason for years to come.

All four were emerging as legitimate big-leaguers. All four were former first- or second-round draft picks. All four were in their mid-20s and supposedly on the cusp of their prime.

However, with Pedroia joining Ellsbury and Buchholz on Boston’s disabled list this week, and Lowrie long since dealt to Houston in part because he couldn’t stay healthy, that core has never been well enough to lead. Since the start of 2010, that quartet has been on the DL for 393 of a possible 1,551 games — which is more than a quarter of the contests over that span, and which may explain part of why the Sox haven’t been to the playoffs since 2009, considering what the club invested in that quartet in the draft and how central the expected contributions of their respective heydays was to the way the squad has been constructed.

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By losing Saturday’s opener, the Red Sox put themselves in a position where they needed to win both of the weekend’s remaining games in order to avoid circumstances the franchise hasn’t faced in 15 years.

Not since 1997 have the Sox failed to be over .500 at the All-Star break, going 38-48 over the unofficial first half of that season, and not since they went 43-41 in 2000 has it been even close. Each of the past six years they’ve had at least 51 wins before the break, and that 2000 season marked the only campaign from 1998-2011 in which Boston wasn’t at least 10 games better than even to that point.

The Sox entered Saturday’s nightcap at 42-42, and that’s not good as far as what it means of their chances moving forward. The 2003 Marlins were the only World Series champ in the wild-card era to win fewer than 43 of their first 83 games, going 41-42, and they are also the eventual champ with the smallest disparity between wins and losses entering the All-Star break, as they were three games over .500. No other ring-earner has been fewer than six games over that mark, with baseball’s last 17 champs having entered the midsummer classic with an average of 14.8 more victories than defeats.

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STAT OF THE WEEK: After Friday night’s 10-8 defeat, the Red Sox are 0-2 this season when scoring at least seven runs against the Yankees — and 23-1 when doing so against everybody else. That may have something to do with the Sox’ bullpen owning a 15.30 earned run average against the Yanks before Justin Germano’s 5 2/3 scoreless innings Saturday afternoon, and a 2.69 ERA versus the rest of the majors.

Dave D’Onofrio covers the Red Sox for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News. His e-mail address is ddonof13@gmail.com.