Are we good? Are we Bad? Or are we just the same old Red Sox?

After a remarkable 27-3 run pulled us all the way back in, five straight losses have reopened the question we thought Boston had finally answered: Who exactly are these Red Sox?

For about a month, the Boston Red Sox had us fooled.

Or maybe they didn’t.

Maybe the team that ripped through baseball, won 27 of 30 games and briefly looked like one of the best teams in the sport is actually who they are.

Maybe the team we’re watching right now — losers of five straight, kicking the ball around, leaving runners on base and finding increasingly creative ways to lose baseball games — is who they are.

Or, perhaps most terrifyingly for Red Sox fans, maybe both versions are real.

So somebody please answer the question.

Are the Boston Red Sox actually good?

Because I have absolutely no idea.

Less than a month ago, this team won 14 consecutive games. Fourteen! You don’t accidentally win 14 baseball games in a row. Boston was pitching. They were hitting. They were getting big outs, timely hits and seemingly every bounce imaginable.

For weeks, watching the Red Sox felt easy.

Then somebody apparently unplugged the machine.

Boston has now lost five straight, matching its longest losing streak of the season. The latest came Wednesday night in Toronto, and it might have been the most Red Sox loss imaginable.

Ranger Suárez gave Boston five innings of one-run baseball. Willson Contreras homered. The Sox carried a lead into the eighth.

Then everything exploded.

Contreras dropped a routine foul popup. The at-bat continued. Toronto took advantage. Tyron Guerrero couldn’t record an out, the Blue Jays hung five runs on Boston in the inning, and a game the Red Sox appeared positioned to win turned into a 6-4 loss.

Five straight five losses.

Just like that.

And that’s the frustrating part.

This isn’t a bad baseball team. I don’t know, maybe it is.

Bad baseball teams don’t go 27-3.

Bad baseball teams don’t reel off 14 consecutive wins.

Bad baseball teams aren’t sitting at 64-56 with a +79 run differential in the middle of August.

But really good baseball teams shouldn’t look this bad this quickly, either.

Good teams don’t lose 2 out of 3 to the Athletics.

The mistakes have returned.

The missed opportunities have returned.

The bullpen suddenly looks vulnerable.

I feel anything but good about Chapman coming out of the pen recently.

And that familiar Red Sox feeling — the one where you’re watching a perfectly winnable game and just waiting to see exactly how they’re going to screw it up — has returned too.

Ah, there it is. Same old Sox.

So Which Red Sox Team Is Real?

That’s the question that matters now.

Every baseball team goes through losing streaks. Even great teams lose four or five in a row. A five-game skid in a 162-game season isn’t a reason to burn Fenway Park to the ground.

So put down the pitchforks and torches.

But don’t let these guys off the hook either.

They pulled us back in. We wrote them off, moved on with our summer, see you next year Red Sox. But they pulled us back in, again. Just like they always do.

Went on the greatest streak imaginable, pulled our hearts back, convinced us they had changed for the better, and right when we get fully back invested, the bats go cold and the bullpen stinks.

Again yet again they’ve lost five straight.

But the concern isn’t simply that Boston has lost five games.

It’s how they’ve lost them.

The Sox have gone from playing crisp, confident baseball to looking like the team we watched stumble through stretches earlier this season. Wednesday was the perfect example: Boston received good starting pitching, had a late lead and still couldn’t finish the job.

One mistake became another.

Then another.

Then five runs.

Whoops.

And suddenly you’re sitting there wondering how a team that looked nearly unbeatable a week ago forgot how to win a baseball game.

That’s what makes this skid different.

It reopened a question we thought Boston had answered and put to bed.

Maybe the Red Sox are bad?

Maybe They’re Just Good, Not Great?

Here’s the other side of this.

Maybe we’re overcomplicating it.

Maybe the Red Sox aren’t the unstoppable juggernaut we watched during that ridiculous 27-3 run.

And maybe they’re not the disaster we’ve watched over the last five games.

Maybe they’re simply a good baseball team that can look great when everything is clicking and can look painfully average when it isn’t.

Honestly, that’s probably the answer.

The problem is that we’re getting close to the point in the season where “probably” isn’t particularly comforting.

It’s August.

The postseason race is real.

The games matter.

Boston spent more than a month building itself into a legitimate contender. You don’t erase all of that because of five ugly games.

But you can certainly start giving it away.

And after everything this team did to climb back into the conversation, watching them fall back into the same frustrating habits is enough to make any Red Sox fan nervous.

Time to Figure It Out

This season has already featured just about every version of the Boston Red Sox imaginable.

We’ve seen the bad Red Sox.

We’ve seen the really bad Red Sox.

We’ve seen the confusing Red Sox.

We’ve seen the Red Sox who couldn’t get out of their own way.

Then we saw something completely different.

A confident team.

A dangerous team.

A team nobody wanted to play.

For 30 games, Boston looked like it had finally figured it out.

WE SWEPT THE DODGERS!

Now?

We’re back to asking questions.

Are they good?

Are they bad?

Was that incredible run the beginning of something real, or just one spectacular heater?

Are these five losses simply the inevitable bump every team encounters over six months?

Or are we watching the same old problems start creeping back in at exactly the wrong time?

I still think this is a good baseball team.

We’ve seen too much evidence to believe otherwise.

But it’s time for the Red Sox to prove that the last month wasn’t just a delightful little summer vacation from reality.

Because October is getting closer.

The games are getting bigger.

And nobody wants to spend September asking the same question we’ve been asking about this team all year.

Who exactly are the Boston Red Sox?

Figure it out.