RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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The craziest game in Major League Baseball on Thursday wasn't the Cubs ' 11-inning win over the Blue Jays , in which they were trailing 2-0 with two outs and two strikes in the bottom of the ninth. The biggest story wasn't the Braves winning their eighth straight game, with the help of the season's weirdest home run , either.
Once again, the Red Sox were the team stealing the show. They matched the Braves for the longest current winning streak in the majors at eight. As for the game, a 12-11 win over the White Sox in 13 innings, holy smokes.
The White Sox jumped out to a 3-0 lead early, but the Red Sox tied them, 5-5, by the end of the fourth. The White Sox took the lead right back in the fifth and took a 7-6 lead to the ninth. The Red Sox tied them. The White Sox scored in the top of the 10th, 11th and 12th, only for the Red Sox to tie them up each time. Finally, in the 13th, the Red Sox walked it off on Caleb Durbin's base hit.
The win probability chart resembles one of those up-and-down wooden roller coasters. The White Sox had a lead in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th innings ... and they lost.
In the big picture here, it's worth remembering the Red Sox were 32-46 after a loss to the lowly Rockies on June 24. There was talk about who the Red Sox would trade other than ace Sonny Gray and All-Star closer Aroldis Chapman , because those two were a given. Gray, correctly even if somberly, talked about how the Red Sox just weren't a very good team. They sat around a 9% chance of making the playoffs a year after being there.
And then the Yankees showed up to Fenway, and the Red Sox just went absolutely bonkers. A 15-game winning streak began with a four-game sweep of their hated rival.
Not only is this the greatest regular-season run for the Red Sox franchise, which goes back to 1901 when they were the Boston Americans, but it is one of the best stretches for any squad in MLB history.
Here are the post-integration (1947-present) teams that have pulled off 36-game stretches of at least an .850 winning percentage and we'll include the whole run (sometimes bigger than 36 games).
What's more, every other team on this list went on the run mentioned above after already having a winning record, aside from the Tigers (started the season with it) and the 2013 Dodgers, who were at worst 12 games under .500 that year. This means the Red Sox have completed one of the biggest in-season turnarounds in MLB history.
Of course, the focus now turns to what the Red Sox can be moving forward. As noted, the list above includes just three World Series winners, meaning the other five not currently playing failed to get the job done. The Red Sox are still in the second AL wild-card spot, meaning if the playoffs started right now they'd have to visit the Bronx for the Wild Card Series.
The season doesn't end right now, however, and the Red Sox are only a half-game behind the Yankees. They are five back of the Rays for the AL East lead and also the top AL seed. No one in the Central or West really seems scary right now -- keep in mind, the Red Sox just swept the AL Central-leading White Sox. Things can change, of course, as this story illustrates. For the time being, though, the Red Sox seem just as good a bet as anyone to win the pennant in a weaker league.
The lineup is going well. Since that June 24 endpoint, the Red Sox are fifth in the majors in on-base percentage, fourth in slugging percentage and third in runs scored. The career year from Willson Contreras and quality season from Wilyer Abreu have been there all along, but now Caleb Durbin , Masataka Yoshida , Ceddanne Rafaela and Andruw Monasterio are crushing the ball. Trade deadline acquisition Adley Rutschman is coming soon, too.
Jake Bennett and Payton Tolle have helped solidify the rotation behind Gray and Ranger Suárez -- Thursday's bad start notwithstanding -- will surely be fine.
The bullpen behind Chapman and setup man Garrett Whitlock has been great all season, currently leading the majors with a 2.89 bullpen ERA (no one else is closer than 3.11).
There are lingering possible X-factors, too. Roman Anthony and Curtis Mead could rejoin the offense in September. And last season's Cy Young runner-up, Garrett Crochet , started a throwing program on Tuesday.
As things stand, the Red Sox have a 96.2% chance to make the playoffs, according to SportsLine. Given everything I just said above, though, it's fair to think bigger with this group. Again, the AL isn't too scary by any stretch. It doesn't have a Dodgers (or, for that matter, a Brewers or Braves ... and we could even argue the Cubs are scarier than the Rays).
In looking at the projections on Fangraphs, the Red Sox now have a 15.3% chance to win the American League and 6.9% chance to win the World Series.
In the midst of streaks like this, we can often get caught up in recency bias, but it sure feels like the odds are higher than those percentages, doesn't it? They seem pretty bulletproof right now.
At a bare minimum, the Red Sox are major players in the AL, just about six weeks after we were all certain they would be offloading at the trade deadline.
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