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BOSTON — Shortly after midnight as Sunday turned to Monday, the party hadn’t ended outside Fenway Park.
As Red Sox players and coaches left the team’s parking lot on Van Ness St., about a hundred fans were still there cheering them on. That was the result of a dramatic doozy of a 5-4, extra-innings win that clinched Boston’s first four-game sweep of the Yankees since 2018 — and the club’s first four-game winning streak of 2026.
A team that has been allergic to momentum for three months finally has some. A club that has too often folded and found creative ways to lose found an exciting way to win. The Red Sox entered the series against the Yankees 15½ games behind them in the standings, then thoroughly outplayed them for four straight days. The question now is if any of it matters.
The Red Sox, who crossed the midpoint of the season Saturday, dug themselves such an early-season hole that four straight wins over one of the American League’s best teams represents a little more than a chip in the proverbial ice block. Even after their best series of the year, the Sox are 10 games under .500. They’re 4½ games back of a wild card spot with eight teams ahead of them. FanGraphs has their odds of reaching the postseason at just 17.3%. Saturday’s win to end the first half of the season, as encouraging as it was... put Boston on pace for a 70-win year.
Still, the last four days at Fenway were fun, something that hasn’t been said often for a team that is 16-25 at home this season. A sleepy Thursday night crowd woke up midway through the first game of the series when Caleb Durbin hit a go-ahead homer. They were into it as Payton Tolle, Jake Bennett and Sonny Gray — to different extents — flirted with no-hitters. They appreciated the efforts of newcomers like Anthony Seigler, Tyron Guerrero and Tsung-Che Cheng, who all contributed. And they cheered loudest when Jarren Duran, one day after getting into it with a fan behind the Red Sox dugout, hit a walk-off single Sunday night.
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“That was a special four days and they were into it,” said interim manager Chad Tracy. “They were loud.”
The Red Sox of the first half of 2026 have been called lots of things. Resilient is not one of them. It is hard, considering the randomness of baseball, for a team to be 1-38 when trailing after eight innings and 0-41 when trailing after eight. Yet the Red Sox have found a way. Even with a rotation that is among baseball’s best, Boston has stumbled into losses in various ways. Sunday felt like another case — and the worst example yet — before the top of the 10th.
With Gray taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning, Boston looked to be cruising toward a victory when closer Aroldis Chapman — for the third time in five outings — blew it in a ninth inning that included a rare miscue from Gold Glover Wilyer Abreu and some aggressive Yankees baserunning that tied the game, 2-2. The top of the 10th brought more misfortune for the Red Sox as the Yankees plated two more runs off Justin Slaten and had what seemed to be a commanding 4-2 lead. With the unheralded trio of Seigler, Connor Wong and Cheng due up in the 10th against Fernando Cruz, some headed for the exits. They had seen this movie before.
The Red Sox, though, wanted to write a different script. Seigler’s RBI single plated Durbin, the automatic runner, and made it 4-3. Masataka Yoshida pinch-hit for Wong and laced a first-pitch double that put the winning run in scoring position. Cheng’s sacrifice fly tied it. And Duran, who has had an ugly, ugly June, put his bat on the ball to win it in walk-off fashion.
“There’s been times in the past couple months where that would have crushed us, but that was not the case,” Tracy said of the 10th inning. “They were fired up to try to get that done.”
Added Duran: “I am sure a bunch of people counted us out as soon as we gave up two runs. I’m sure people left, I’m sure people gave up on us but nobody in this clubhouse gave up. We’ve shown it this whole series.
“It just felt like, ‘Let’s (expletive) ride and let’s (expletive) do this thing. That was sick. It was sick to see everybody go out there and get their hacks off. Nobody was nervous, it seemed like.”
For a Red Sox team that has been defined by losing games like that for three months, it was refreshing for one to go the other way. The hope now is that it’s a sign of things to come.
“That was wild,” said Gray. “We came away with the win. That’s all that matters. That’s all I care about. I just kept a positive mindset throughout. As soon as they tied the game, then took the lead, I was in here and I kept telling everyone that was around, ‘We can still win this game. We could still win this game.’ Look at it. We walked away with the win.”
The Red Sox might find themselves walking a fine line in the two weeks before the All-Star break. What awaits them are four winnable series — at home against the .500 Nationals and on the road against the putrid Angels, upstart White Sox and always-dysfunctional Mets. A good couple of weeks could get Craig Breslow and the front office to think about buying at the trade deadline, an outcome that’s not in the cards right now and likely would not be best for the organization in the long run. But momentum is a funny thing and in a muddled American League, might be enough to turn hope into action.
“It’s coming down to it for us,” Gray acknowledged.
A mediocre-or-worse two weeks before the break might render what happened this weekend at Fenway meaningless. For the first time in weeks, though, there seems to be a sliver of hope — and that’s not nothing.
“There’s a long way to go,” Tracy said. “We’ve still got a lot of work to do, but we have some momentum now. Maybe the best momentum we’ve had. We’ve just got to keep riding it for as long as we can.”
More Red Sox coverage
- Roman Anthony update: Red Sox outfielder opens up on ‘long, slow process’ of wrist injury
- Jarren Duran on walk-off Red Sox win: ‘I let a little bit off my shoulders’ after brutal June
- Sonny Gray had Red Sox believing he ‘legitimately’ was going to throw no-hitter in ‘brilliant’ outing
- Red Sox reactions: Sonny Gray takes no-hit bid into 8th, Boston rallies to win crazy game
- Red Sox have ‘looming’ decision on Patrick Sandoval’s role; is a trade possible?
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