After a disappointing but not quite disastrous road trip, the outlook among Red Sox fans has slipped slightly over the past few days. While a 2-4 southwestern swing to San Diego and Houston won’t kill you, the Sox probably should have found a way to come home 3-3 given there were loses that involved a big Roman Antony double to tie the game in the ninth inning on Saturday and a Garrett Crochet start in which they scored six runs on Monday. If they managed to grab just one of those games, we all probably feel a little better about the team this morning.
However, in the grand scheme of things, skies are already clearing. The Red Sox just completed a 24-game stretch coming out of the All-Star break in which they played 15 of 24 on the road, and 18 of 24 against teams with better records than them. All those declarations you may have seen a month ago about the Red Sox having one of if not the hardest schedule in the second half of the season were almost entirely weighted to the 24 game stretch they just completed. A stretch where they held their own and went 13-11.
There’s certainly things they could have done better, but they made it through the iron mostly unscathed. As of this morning, they still own a playoff spot and find themselves just 4.5 games off the division lead (and the best record in the AL for that matter) with 40 games to play.
So with that in mind, this is the time for the Sox to make a move in the standings as the schedule softens significantly. When they resume play on Friday at Fenway, they begin a stretch of 34 consecutive games where they don’t play a single team with a better record than them.
To expand on this thought, there are currently nine teams in baseball with a better record than the Red Sox, and they are as follows:
- Brewers
- Phillies
- Cubs
- Padres
- Dodgers
- Blue Jays
- Tigers
- Astros
- Mariners
So far this season, the Red Sox have played these teams 40 times, and they’re a full ten games under .500 against them at 15-25. But against everybody else in baseball? they’re 51-31. That’s a full 20 games over .500, and a 100 win pace over the course of a 162 game season if extrapolated out.
So again, if the Red Sox are going to make a move and position themselves for a pennant, this is where it needs to happen. Here’s how those 34 games look on a more detailed level:
- 3 vs. Marlins
- 2 vs. Orioles
- 4 at Yankees
- 4 at Orioles
- 3 vs. Pirates
- 3 vs. Guardians
- 3 at D-Backs
- 3 at A’s
- 3 vs. Yankees
- 3 vs. A’s
- 3 at Rays
Now if you want to get really optimistic, let’s say the Red Sox get scalding hot over this stretch. They run into a bunch of mediocre pitching that they’ve crushed all year, Dustin May be becomes a serviceable backend starter, they catch lightning in a bottle in the bullpen with Justin Slaten coming back at some point and a couple of guys getting called up from Worcester, and they rip off something like a 24-10 stretch in these games.
If that happens (huge if), it’s possible they walk into Canada on September 23rd with the division lead. They would need some help from Toronto to not get hot themselves (their schedule is a mixed bag between now and then) but the combination is somewhere in the cards.
This is significant because after this 34 game stretch against softer competition, the Sox close the season with three games in Toronto, and then three games at home against the Tigers. The goal right now should be to leapfrog those teams by the time they play them and grab the No. 1 seed. If that happens, the Red Sox would not face another team with a better record than them for the rest of the season unless they got to the World Series and ran into a top seed on the other side of the board. That’s bonkers considering the long line of teams they just faced with better records than them, but it’s somewhere within the realm of possibility if they can get all the pieces to fit.
Of course, it can also go the other way too. Both the Yankees and Guardians are included in the upcoming list of teams on the schedule with worse records than the Sox, and if there’s slippage there, not only is the division off the table, but the Wild Card race suddenly becomes problematic as well. In other words, we’ve got the most meaningful stretch of late summer baseball in Boston we’ve had in many, many years, and that should be exciting all by itself!
