The mathematical realities for the 2026 Boston Red Sox, winners of five in a row

Tuesday 6/30/26

Red Sox fans are funny. But given that virtually no one in our world is actually funny, I don't mean funny that way but in the ridiculous sense. After sweeping the Yankees (who are without Aaron Judge) in a four game series at Fenway, the Sox turned around and beat the Nationals at the old ball yard last night to improve their season-best winning streak to five games. They've gone from 14 games under .500 to 9 games under. Consequently, Red Sox fans are now strutting about--at least on social media--saying that this is a good team, the season has turned around, quoting Kevin Millar's "Don't let us win" line from 2004, and going all "I told you so!" Such people typically call the Yankees the "Skankees." That's right, people of adult age--as if this would be less embarrassing for a child--actually type that out. Each time. You're talking cave men, with less education and maturity.

I'm unsure if anyone has ever cared more about the Red Sox than I, but whatever these people are and what I am--even in just this matter--isn't the same. I mean, if they're fans, am I? Whatever we are, we're different things. The Red Sox are 9 games under .500 here on last day of the odious month that is June (says the fan of autumn). Of course I'm pleased they've put some wins together. The starting pitching has been excellent. Good stuff to watch. I even stayed up late--for me--on Sunday to watch as much of the last game of the Yankees series as I could before falling asleep.

Sonny Gray really deserved the win, which would have improved his record to 10-1. Anytime you see him may be the last time with the Sox. He's a Cy Young contender. I'm sure they never thought they'd get this from him over half a season. Rarely in baseball history have you seen a guy come to a team, put up these kinds of numbers, and not even play a full season with that team, but this is a pitcher who could really help a contender, he was only going to be here for a year anyway, and Gray being dealt is definitely on the table, unless the Sox' front office thinks this isn't a lost season, which would be dereliction of duty in my view.

Gray and Willson Contreras should both be All-Stars. The latter is having a career year. He's never been this good before, he won't be this good again. He may end up with 30 homers and 100 RBI and an OPS of .900. A season like that is really going to jump out on his baseball-reference page when he's all done. He's also kind of nuts, which I don't think is a bad thing. It's the good kind of baseball nuts. Sometimes nuts is like fire, and you need fire.

(The above "Skanees"-writing Red Sox fans--which is your median Red Sox fan in today's world--are also writing, "Sign Contreras long term!" because they 1. Don't know baseball 2. Don't know how time works and 3. Don't know anything and just say things. Contreras is in his age thirty-four season. He used to be a catcher, and catcher seasons put more wear and tear on you than non-catcher seasons. But definitely lock him up until he's forty with the expectation that the career year he's authoring now becomes the norm because, again, time and age doesn't exist, only what you mostest bestest want! Whee!!!!)

Caleb Durbin has been playing good, heady ball over the last month. I'm pleased for him. He's up over .230 now. If this guy could hit .250 for you this year after the start he had, that'd be a win. And if he can build off that next year and improve his game, he can be a useful player. His defense is a plus. He's been hitting well and driving the ball, and he came up the other day, saw how the Yankees were playing him, and dropped down a perfect bunt to the third base side for an infield hit. Set a tone. That's winning baseball. That's how you play the game. There aren't a lot of "That's how you play the game!" type of guys in the game now.

Meanwhile, Jarren Duran had another 0-for-4 last night with two more strikeouts. He's under .200. He also got into it with a fan over the weekend after the fan correctly pointed out his batting average. Heckling today isn't what it once was in, say, the 1970s and 1980s, when some of the comments were in the neighborhood of jailable offenses.

People are worse on the whole, yes. But you're surveilled anytime you're outside. People are unthinking brutes, but they're aware that they can't away with as much as they'd like to, so they've learned, by osmosis, not to say and do what they want to say and do. Which doesn't stop plenty of other poisonous things from leaking out. Duran is soft. Durbin isn't. They both got off to horrid starts and how they responded speaks to the difference between the two. We're late into now. This is the halfway point. You'll see people still talk like it's early, which is this weird misconception that persists in baseball, and longer in baseball, in ways it doesn't with any other sport.

I wrote in these pages recently that Payton Tolle will be decent-ish, then he has some outstanding game. That's been his pitching pattern. His ERA is mostly what it is because of those great games where he goes deep and gives up 1 or no runs. Then he'll give up 3 in 5 innings. He had one of those great games in the Yankees series. People are caught up in the "He's so fun!" thing with him, like when he talks about how much he can eat, which, as with just about everything, a case of people being stupid and immature.

You don't want to make things harder on your body and your career by not being in shape. I feel like there's less excuse to be in today's modern medicine and modern training methods sports world than in 1932. People who are out of shape in their early twenties usually just get in worse and worse shape as they age.

This is where people without a brain like to say, "You must be fun at parties!" You have to be in shape if you're going to have a long and fruitful career or just make the most out of your abilities. There are the occasional exceptions, but even when those players have great and long careers, they could have been better. They leave a lot out there, even if they never leave anything on their plate. I like this guy, I like watching him pitch and compete, but it is cause for concern.

Aroldis Chapman is slumping, but I don't think that's a big deal. Hasn't cost them too much--a game. I don't expect him to be a problem, however much longer he's here.

Here's the thing when you get in a hole like these Red Sox: to climb back out and have a playoff contending season, you need a big win streak. Winning series isn't really enough. At some point, you have to win 10 in a row. Then win series. Teams that win that many games in a row don't have the Red Sox' kind of built-in flaws. A lot has to go right for the Red Sox to win a string of games. They need a starter to go 6 or 7 and allow 3 runs or fewer. They're a team that wins 4-2. They don't have the roster to win a bunch of different ways.

So, yes, you can get a grouping of games where it goes like that. And even bad teams are going to have for or five-game winning streak or streaks. The season is 162 games long. it's going to happen. This streak ironically may not be doing the Sox any favors because they can end up blurring the line and fooling themselves that this is a season where they can do something, which could result in them holding on to players they should be moving and worsening their future for their present.

I'll say it again: they're 9 games under .500. Let's look at this a different way: when is the earliest, realistically, the Sox could be over .500, barring some torrid stretch? Just by playing decent ball, I mean.

If you do what I do and look at the month by month records of teams throughout baseball history, you'll see that even good teams aren't huge amounts of games over .500 each month. If you were 10 games over .500 each months you'd finish 60 games over .500, and no one is going to approach that, right?

You're looking at the Red Sox reaching .500, if they were good, as their fans say, and played well--played realistically well, I mean, not as a wagon--by September. What's that going to do for you? Right now, .500 would get you into the playoffs with this current system, which is like the alms approach to playoff berths.

But what usually happens is that over the course of the season, those teams in the Wild Card spots go more games over .500. They add on, if you will. So that instead an 81-81 team, that team has 89 or 80 wins by the final day of the season. So, if the Sox got to .500 on September 1, they'd need to go 11 games or some such over .500 that last month.

I'm saying that based on the roster and the math, this isn't realistic. Unrealistic things can happen in sports. That's a commonplace. But it doesn't mean you should expect them to, especially when decisions aren't only about the here and now, and good decisions often have more to do with the future than the here and now.