What to Make of the 2026 Boston Red Sox?

It would be hard to overstate how much the Boston Red Sox stunk during the first three months of the 2026 season. I watched some of their games during those months. They were a decent ballclub — so long as you ignored the hitting, the fielding, and the baserunning.

Manager Alex Cora and most of his coaching staff were fired after a 10-17 start — but it’s not like the team really started playing better after that. It didn’t help that the team was riddled with injuries. Garrett Crochet, their best pitcher, was placed on the injured list in late April; Roman Anthony, their most promising rookie, was put on the IL a week later. Other players like Brayan Bello and Jarren Duran seriously regressed. Some data, like their run differential, suggested that they were underperforming their fundamentals. But that was cold comfort watching a squad that seemed destined to be sellers at the trading deadline after improbably making the playoffs in 2025.

The team’s atrocious record at Fenway generated very loud fan chants of “sell the team!” night after night. The nadir was in late June when the Red Sox lost in a walk-off to the Colorado Rockies, leaving them at 31-45. WEEI’s Rob Bradford’s assessment after the loss was brutal:

To begin with, they lost to the worst team in Major League Baseball. Secondly, the Red Sox now share the inglorious honor of possessing the fewest wins in MLB with those same Rockies….

Even though the American League is trending toward combining for its worst collective winning percentage, the Red Sox are one of the very few teams that seem hell-bent on not taking advantage of the mediocrity. Only two A.L. teams, the Angels and Royals, are further out of a wild card spot than the Red Sox, who stand seven games away from the final wild card position.

There is also zero evidence that it is a team capable of rattling off the kind of win streak that will change the narrative, having claimed just two three-game win streaks and never winning four in a row.

If you’ve paid any attention to baseball over the past two months you know where this is going. Against all odds the Red Sox rattled off the kind of win streak that changed the narrative, going 27-3 in one thirty-game stretch. Late last month FanGraphs’ Jay Jaffe explained what was going on:

The turnaround began on June 25, when the Yankees came to Boston for a four-game series with the AL’s best record (48-31). The Red Sox ripped off a rousing four-game sweep of their division rivals, capped by Jarren Duran’s 10th-inning walk-off single on June 28. After dropping two out of three to the Nationals at Fenway Park, the Red Sox embarked upon the nine-game road trip that kicked off their winning streak, taking three apiece from the Angels, White Sox, and Mets before the All-Star break. They began the second half at home with a four-game sweep of the AL East-leading Rays (56-38 at the start of the series), then edged the Orioles 6-5 on Tuesday night thanks to Caleb Durbin’s eighth-inning homer off Tyler Wells….

As with many a stretch of this caliber, Boston’s run owes to major improvements on both sides of the ball. Through June 24, the Red Sox were scoring just 3.94 runs per game, last in the AL; they’ve improved that to 5.17 per game since, the league’s second-best rate. Through June 24, they were holding opponents to just 4.03 runs per game, third fewest in the AL, but since then, they’ve trimmed that to 2.91 runs per game, the best in the league by more than a third of a run….

Barring another slide over the next 10 days, the Red Sox are presumed to be in the market for a right-handed bat, with a catcher, a middle infielder, and/or a DH the obvious areas of need. A late-inning arm and an extra starter are probably on their shopping list as well, as they are for virtually every contender; in a rotation that currently has three members of its projected starting five on the IL, and rookies who are heading into uncharted territory, workload-wise, this team can’t have too much pitching. Still, three weeks ago, few people thought the Red Sox would be in a position to desire such luxury items in early August.

The Red Sox went on another winning streak after Jaffe wrote his column, improving their playoff odds even more, according to FanGraphs:

Sure enough, the Red Sox were aggressive buyers at the trading deadline, securing All-Star catcher Adley Rutschman from the Orioles among other reinforcements.

ESPN’s Bradford Doolittle crunched the numbers to explain how much better the team has been playing:

Invariably, any time a team gets this hot, it’s not hitting or pitching but both. This has been the case for the Red Sox. At the same time, their pitching was pretty good to begin with. It’s the batsmen who have really leveled up for Boston of late.

At the start of the blazing streak, when things looked bleak, Boston was on pace to score 635 runs while allowing 664, for a minus-29 differential. The Red Sox are now on pace to score 719 runs and allow 605, for a plus-114 differential. They improved their on-pace projections by 84 runs on the offensive side and 59 on the defensive side, adding up to the incredible 143-run leap in differential pace….

The revamped rotation, just so-so earlier in the season, has been one of baseball's best. Since the June 18 nadir, the starters rank second with a 3.05 ERA while leading MLB in quality starts….

And the offense has been blazing. Before the spree, Boston’s .694 OPS ranked 25th in baseball. Since June 18, that number is .764, the seventh-best. As a team, the Red Sox have hit for much more power. Boston hit 61 homers in its first 72 games (29th) but has clubbed 57 homers in 46 games since.

This doesn’t just appear to be happenstance. Boston, as an offense, has walked more, chased less and been more willing to absorb a few strikeouts. The collective exit velocity is exactly the same (88 mph) but the launch angle has increased by 2 degrees. The Red Sox have morphed into much more of a take-and-rake club -- and it has worked.

What has changed? Lots of things. Everything. And in a sense nothing, because the Red Sox have more or less ended up where they were projected back in March. What we did not see coming was the path they took to get here. Indeed, no one could have seen it coming, because it's just so darn rare.

The Red Sox did not just start playing better — their games became ridiculously exciting. I mean, look at the highlights from this win against the Chicago White Sox, which was just ridiculous:

Here’s the thing, though: I’m not sure I am completely sold on this team.

I’ve been to two games at Fenway and watched multiple others during their hot streak, and three things stand out to me. First is that they’ve been remarkably proficient at two-out scoring. That is a good thing but it is also kind of a lucky thing — and if their luck runs out, that’s a problem.

Second, their infield defense has not looked great.1 The data confirms my eye test: according to ESPN’s Doolittle, Baseball Savant, has the Red Sox at plus-16 fielding runs above average before their hot streak; they have been at zero since. I have seen multiple run scored against the Sox due to sloppy play and limited range from their fielders.

Third, and most important, however, the Red Sox have been the beneficiaries of sloppy play by their opponents. For every Red Sox miscue I have seen during this hot streak, I have seen their opponents make two mistakes. Credit to the Red Sox — they’ve taken advantage of their opponents mistakes. But luck is not a strategy to win in October. Or August — the Red Sox have lost four straight this week to under .500 teams.

I might not be sold on the team, but I can’t quit them either. I was at Fenway when the Red Sox 15-game winning streak came to an end. They were down 5-1 in the bottom of the ninth — and yet the park was still packed, the fans were on their feet, cheering the Sox in the fervent hope that they could will the team into another comeback. It was not to be, but that’s not the point. The fun of being a sports fan is believing in your team enough to convince yourself that they can come back when they are down, that they can pull off the improbable. And these Red Sox are good enough and spirited enough to justify that kind of fandom.

I doubt the 2026 Boston Red Sox will win the World Series. I’m still not completely convinced that they will make the playoffs. But I am grateful to them for their recent run of domination. It convinced me that there is at least one conceivable future in which they go on a hell of a playoff run. I have no idea if that is their actual future — but a fan can hope.