If you’re a frequent visitor to Over The Monster, you may be familiar with my ramblings about how the 2026 Red Sox and the 2009 Rockies seem to have a strange connection. Well guess what? It’s still getting stranger.
It started back in late April when Chad Tracy took over the squad following Alex Cora’s firing. This was immediately noteworthy because Chad’s father, Jim Tracy, took over the 2009 Rockies in late May of that year when Colorado fired Clint Hurdle. At first, this gave us the opportunity for a cute baseball story where father and son each took over a team midseason and then led them to the playoffs, but as it turns out, the similarities were only just beginning.
The 2026 Red Sox continued their plunge through the end of the spring and bottomed out at 14 games under .500 in late June. This proved oddly similar to the 2009 Rockies, who bottomed out at 12 games under .500 in early June of that year before going on a run and winning 17 of 18. Thanks to the wonderful folks at pennant race graphs (seriously, go check them out), we can visually follow the analogous rebounds of the two clubs:
The bounce back for the 2026 Red Sox was a bit delayed, but the kindred spirits aspect to these journeys is both undeniable and incredible.
Then there’s the coinciding Caleb Durbin and Troy Tulowitzki turnaround factors. On May 24th of this year, Durbin was hitting .163 with a .479 OPS and seemed on the verge of getting sent to Worcester. He then didn’t play for three days, reworked his swing, came back on May 28th, and is hitting .303 with an .870 OPS since. That’s nearly a .400 point bump in OPS.
Crazy by itself, but you know what’s even crazier? On June 2nd of 2009, Troy Tulowitzki was hitting .218 with a .691 OPS. He then didn’t play for three days, reworked his swing to include a taller stance and a toe tap, came back on June 6th, and posted a .331 average and a 1.035 OPS the rest of the way. That’s a .344 point bump in OPS.
Okay, but as fun as all these comparisons from earlier in the season are, why are we talking about the similarities between these teams today with the Red Sox on a five game losing streak? Well, because of this game:
That is Ryan Spilborghs hitting a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the 14th inning on August 24th, 2009. For nearly two decades, I argued that this was the greatest baseball game ever played in the month of August. (Seriously, go check out the box score.) It’s not just that it had the perfect ending with a grand slam capping off a five run bottom of the 14th inning after the Giants scored three in the top half of the frame, but it’s things like a relief pitcher (Adam Eaton) coming up directly before Spilborghs and the Giants walking him in a game that for most of the night had been dominated by outstanding pitching and defense. (Keep in mind, this was a 1-1 game at Coors Field through 13 innings before the team combined for eight runs in 14th.)
That night was so extraordinary, it moved me as a baseball fan. In fact, it’s a huge reason why I’m a writer here at Over The Monster today. If you go over to site’s home page, look at “The Feed” posts and click on my username in the poll I have there about pitching at the trade deadline, you’ll see in that profile I joined SB Nation as a member on August 25th, 2009 (over at Purple Row). That of course was right after this grand slam. That’s how I joined the community, over time fell in love with the idea of someday writing about baseball, and ultimately, along with a lot of other twists and turns, ended up here.
But before I go too far down that rabbit hole — and I could go very, very far down that rabbit hole — I’m no longer sure if that 2009 gem in Colorado is the best baseball game I’ve ever seen played in the month of August. That’s of course because last week, the Red Sox won an absolute barn burner in 13 innings against the White Sox. We now have competition!
But before we go too far down that other rabbit hole (and maybe we should at some point in a different piece compare the two games), I want to talk about what happened to these two teams right after these astonishingly absurd wins.
The 2009 Rockies came off the high of the Spilborghs grand slam and won the next night on a Troy Tulowitzki walk-off single. It was their eighth victory in nine games. The 2026 Red Sox came off their 13-inning high and also won the next night behind Payton Tolle and his 14 strike out performance. It was their ninth straight victory. But immediately after that, both teams went on a five game losing streak.
For more detail, let’s look at the pennant race graph again, this time with the losing streaks circled.
Both of these losing streaks were also caused by the offenses going dormant (maybe coming off the highs of the wild wins?). The 2009 Rockies scored just 11 run in their five game losing streak (averaging just 2.2 runs per game), and the current Red Sox scored exactly 11 runs in their five game losing streak going into the ninth inning last night before they tacked on three against a low leverage reliever to make it 6-4.
Anyway, that brings us up to speed on the story right now.
Looking ahead, we’ve got some good news and we’ve got some bad news.
The good news is the 2009 Rockies recovered pretty swiftly from their five game skid, going 20-11 the rest of the way and making the playoffs as a Wild Card team with 92 wins. So if you’re concerned about how the Sox have played of late, their North Star team says we’ll still see October.
The bad news? That 2009 Rockies team ended up losing in the LDS in four games because their closer, who had been great all year, was battling a nagging injury and allowed a run in the ninth inning of both games 3 and 4. I spent the following few days in the comments section of Purple Row arguing that Tracy should have used the lefty reliver they acquired at the deadline in that situation ….. And Oh My God if the Red Sox season ends in this fashion, I’m going to freak!
Anyway, this is all a long way of saying the Red Sox should be fine despite their five game losing streak. Or at least for the next little while. (We’ve got to find a way to get off this train around September 30th though.)
