2012 was worse, although the injuries caused much of that ... so far the staff has been as bad as anything I've seen since the Pedro deal ... of course that says more about the quality of the Red Sox staff since 1998 than anything. Right now the staff is 12th in fWAR in the AL which is not good enough (although interestingly the starters are 9th - in other words, perfectly mediocre). Porcello probably gets the largest slice of blame pie among the starters. If Porcello were the guy he was the last two seasons, the Top 3 of the rotation + Eduardo would actually be fairly solid. No 1994 Braves, but something you can go to war with.
Sox basically were trying to put together something staffwise resembling the 2002 Angels, 1975 Reds, 1977 Red Sox, what have you ... something competitive that with a good lineup could be better than that.