Maybe there will be October baseball played in Boston this year.
The Boston Red Sox have ripped off 13 straight wins and are back over .500, and right in the middle of the postseason race. Not only are they a game up on the Seattle Mariners for the final wild card spot in the American League, but they have quietly closed the gap to six games for the AL East lead.
There is plenty of season left to play, but the team has come a long way from hearing"sell the team" chants at Fenway Park earlier this year. They are still without Roman Anthony and Garrett Crochet, but they are finding ways to win games. After weeks of speculation that they would be sellers at the trade deadline, they are suddenly expected to be buyers.
“It’s great, especially for the fans,” Willson Contreras said, per The Athletic's Jen McCaffrey. “I don’t want them to start shouting, ‘Sell the team.’ I don’t like that. I take that personally. They’re passionate about it. But I’m really proud of my team, really proud of the work we’ve done. Really proud because of the way we started and how we are right now. I know there’s a lot of games ahead, but they make me proud.”
Contreras knows that there is still plenty of work left to do, but the team has clawed its way back to relevance. They have gone from the depths of the standings to now right in the mix of things. They still have needs to address, and could be on the hunt for a right-handed bat at the deadline, but overall, they are playing more like the team fans expected to see before the season started.
Making the postseason will not be good enough. However, given where the team was, it should still be considered a win, though expectations in Boston are higher. If they get Anthony and Crochet back and also make a couple of moves at the deadline, fans will start thinking about a deep run in the postseason, and they have every right to.