Sports

The Red Sox earned a second look, but are you a believer yet?

GatorTimSports July 18, 2026

Just a few months ago, the Boston Red Sox had the worst record in the American League. 

They were a team going nowhere. The roster was searching for an identity, a fan base bracing for a summer of selling at the deadline instead of buying and I was watching games that felt more like a chore than anything else.  

Then something clicked.

Sixteen wins in eighteen games. An 11-game winning streak, their longest since 2016 when Boston legends Mookie Betts, David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia were on the roster. 

Under the Friday night lights at Fenway, Wilyer Abreu went deep twice. Willson Contreras, back from a five-game suspension, hit one out in his first at-bat back like he’d never left. 

The Red Sox swept the 2-game series on Friday against the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston now sits at 48-48, a .500 record for the first time since the second game of the season. They are also tied for the final American League Wild Card spot for a chance at post-season glory.

So, are they for real?

The honest answer is yes, with an asterisk the size of Fenway’s Green Monster. 

Streaks like this are real in the sense that the players did it, on the field, against major-league pitching. Nobody backs into 16 wins in 18 games. Boston’s rotation and bullpen just threw six shutout innings in one game of that doubleheader and allowed zero runs across six relievers in the finale.

That’s not luck stacking up — that’s a team that has figured out how to play complete baseball, top to bottom, the way interim manager Chad Tracy has been preaching.

But contention isn’t measured by your best three weeks. It’s measured by whether you can sustain it against the field you’re chasing. The Yankees sit at 54-43. The Guardians are 51-46. The Twins are 49-49, technically ahead of Boston in the loss column tiebreaker math.

The Red Sox are percentage points from the playoff cut line, not games clear of it. An 11-game streak gets you to the doorway. It doesn’t let you in.

The Red Sox have earned the right to be taken seriously, but they are far from secure. The next six weeks—not the last two—will determine whether this surge was the beginning of something sustainable or simply a hot stretch. If they continue playing the way they have over the past several days, however, October baseball will begin to feel less like a dream and more like an expectation.