He looked up for a second, pausing as if to gather his thoughts. Then Buchholz gave a simple answer that said so much.

“Everything,” he said.

He is correct in that no one factor leads to a team with a $175 million payroll plunging to nearly the bottom of the American League in a span of six months. It was a combination of mismanagement and misfortune mixed with a series of distracting controversies surrounding manager Bobby Valentine that led them there.

An unearned sense of entitlement among many of the veteran players and an imperious front office made the Red Sox an almost wholly unlikable team.

As the season winds down, they are trying to avoid being the first Red Sox team since 1966 to lose 90 games.

But this season, as shockingly bad as it became, is just part of downward trend for the franchise.

Since winning the World Series in four games against the Colorado Rockies in 2007, the Red Sox have been steadily sliding down the mountain they ascended.

They lost in the American League Championship Series against the Rays in 2008, then were swept by the Angels in a Division Series in 2009.

The Sox missed the playoffs entirely in 2010, then suffered the worst September collapse in history in 2011, again failing to qualify for the postseason.

The Red Sox have won only 45 percent of their games going back to the All-Star break in 2011.

“We used to be the team that people didn’t want to play,” said designated hitter David Ortiz, the longest-tenured player on the roster. “Now we’re looking up. We have to get this thing turned around.”

From a purely baseball standpoint, poor starting pitching and a historic plague of injuries led to the demise of the 2012 team.

Red Sox starters went into the weekend with a 5.03 earned run average, 12th in the American League. Jon Lester, the Opening Day starter, has had the worst season of his career, going 9-14 with 4.94 ERA.

Josh Beckett (5-11, 5.23) was even worse. Buchholz, the third member of the trio expected to carry the rotation, had an ERA over 5.00 until mid-July. By the time he started pitching well, it was too late.

“It’s on us,” Lester said. “Everybody knows how important pitching is. It was incredibly frustrating.”

First-year general manager Ben Cherington, constrained in part by a high-salaried roster constructed by former GM Theo Epstein, did not sign or trade for any starters during the winter. He put his faith in Lester, Beckett, and Buchholz, and the idea of turning late-inning reliever Daniel Bard into a starter.

The Bard move proved to be perhaps the worst decision of the season. Bard lasted only 10 starts before an unnerving bout of wildness in Toronto June 3 led to his demotion to the minor leagues.

Once one of the organization’s best pitchers, Bard now faces an uncertain future in the game, given his lack of control and diminished velocity.

The Red Sox are 39-52 in games started by Lester, Beckett, Buchholz, and Bard. Through June 1, their top three pitchers had an ERA of 5.33.

Only 24-year-old lefthander Felix Doubront (11-9, 4.91) exceeded expectations over the course of the season.

“The starting pitching was a burden on the whole team,” said Valentine. “The bullpen was overworked, and it gave uncertainty to the offense about how many runs they would need to score.

“Until Clay got on a roll, we never had that starter you could look to. In the beginning, it was only Felix, and with him, you didn’t know what to expect because he was essentially a rookie.”

As the starters faltered, injuries left the roster unable to compensate. Not once all season did the Red Sox field a lineup that included Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia, Ortiz, Carl Crawford, and Adrian Gonzalez.

Crawford, who underwent wrist surgery in January, was expected back early in the season. A setback in spring training and then a torn elbow ligament pushed him back to July.

Ellsbury, the talented but injury-prone center fielder, partially dislocated his right shoulder during the home opener April 13. Expected to miss 6-8 weeks, he was out for three months.

Pedroia was hampered for months by a torn muscle in his right thumb that he tried to play through before succumbing to the DL in July.

Andrew Bailey, obtained from Oakland to be the closer, tore a ligament in his right thumb in spring training and was out until mid-August.