During the Red Sox’ remarkable run — which on Thursday night improved to an absurd 31-5 since June 25 — there have been numerous candidates for “Game of the Year.” Worthy candidates, too.
But after the 13-inning affair on Thursday night at Fenway Park, there won’t be any more debate.
What took place was just your standard three multi-run comebacks and three extra-inning comebacks, capped off with a walk-off single by a third baseman who appeared to have dislocated a finger earlier in the oppressively humid night at the ballpark.
“It’s a pinky. It’s all good,” Caleb Durbin said in his walkoff interview after singling up the middle to plate Nick Sogard as the winning run in the bottom of the 13th inning, giving the Red Sox an unforgettable 12-11 win over the White Sox.
The victory capped off a second straight sweep for the Red Sox, who buzzed through the Dodgers over the weekend, improving their record to 63-51.
They’re now a half-game behind the Yankees for the top wild-card spot in the American League and likewise a half-game behind New York for the second-best record in the American League. They also — depending on where you look — now have the fourth- or fifth-shortest odds to win the World Series.
Even the computers are surrendering to the magic that’s playing out on a nightly basis:
More than all of the big-picture impacts of what’s happening, though, the Red Sox now have a single game that can stand as the representation of this entire turnaround. A night when the starting pitcher didn’t have it, when a four-run deficit was erased despite their best hitter being out due to illness, when a reliever spiked a throw to first base to allow two runs to score, when a two-out hit in the bottom of the ninth kept the game alive, when the lights-out closer served up a two-run homer in the 10th but was bailed out by the offense in the bottom of the inning, and when the visitors scored in the first three extra innings, it still wasn’t enough for the Red Sox to fall.
All of that from a team that, earlier in the season, literally could not win a baseball game when trailing by three runs at any point.
If that doesn’t tell you that it’s damn near impossible for these Red Sox to lose a game right now, then nothing will.
“This ranks at the top of the list, I’d say,” said interim (but not for long) manager Chad Tracy after midnight. “You guys can ask me questions about the game; I’m not sure I’ll remember quite what inning certain things happened. It was unbelievable. They just did not want to lose. So, it was incredible.”
Tracy had to empty his entire bench and bullpen in this game. After Ranger Suarez could only make it through three innings, Tracy used eight relievers, including asking newcomer Erik Miller to pitch two innings for the first time in his big league career.
Fellow newcomer Jake Rogers had to catch four high-pressure innings late in the game after Connor Wong was replaced with a pinch runner (also a deadline acquisition in Eli White, who scored the tying run) in the bottom of the ninth.
Seemingly every night, a new stat spreads like wildfire on social media that puts the Red Sox’ run into perspective. Or, at least, that’s the goal. Really, though, this is all hard to digest and comprehend.
After this particular win, OptaStats noted that the Red Sox became the only team in the modern era to score in five separate innings in the ninth or later. That stat loses some luster, though, considering the runner on second in extra innings is still a relatively new addition to baseball.
So how about this one? This was the Red Sox’ sixth sweep over a team who entered the series in first place, marking the first time any team has done that in a season since the expansion era in 1961.
A night earlier, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale shared that the Red Sox have won nine straight sereis for the first time since … the year Fenway Park opened, in 1912. And Nightengale noted that the Red Sox are the first team to go from 14 games under .500 to 11 games over .500 in just 42 days.
That’s all difficult to process. But ESPN’s Buster Olney had a much simpler way to describe what took place at Fenway Park on Thursday night: “one of the greatest regular-season games ever.” And no, it’s not hyperbole.
Even Durbin — who in many ways is the embodiment of the team’s turnaround, having batted .163 through the first 48 games but now hitting .313 with a .903 OPS over the past 59 games — can’t find the proper words to describe what’s taking place on a nightly basis for the Red Sox.
“We definitely expect to win I think — yeah, I don’t know. We’re not really thinking about it,” he said while being unable to hold back a smile in the winning clubhouse. “We’re just going out and playing hard. I think we just have the right people. We have the right people that just love competing and we just feed off each other.”
The Red Sox are now 17-3 since the All-Star break, 26-3 since July 3, and of course, 31-5 since June 25. This is the best stretch of winning baseball the Red Sox have ever authored in their entire 126-year history, and with a soft schedule remaining in August — they’re host the 25-games-under-.500 A’s next, heading to Toronto to face the last-place Blue Jays, visiting the last-place Pirates, hosting a good Diamondbacks team but then welcoming in a 19-games-under-.500 Giants team for their next five series — they should only add to that historic winning pace.
What comes next is anyone’s guess — truly. Still, for the time being, Thursday’s unbelievable, difficult-to-fathom, all-hands-on-deck, come-from-behind-multiple-times victory was the masterpiece of what has been the best stretch of baseball Boston has ever seen.
