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BOSTON — Not all wins are the same, especially when you’ve stitched together 13 in a row.
On Saturday, the Red Sox flexed their muscles in a comeback win, belting three homers and showing the kind of power that was missing through the first three months.
Sunday was different, however. In their 6-1 victory over the first-place Tampa Bay Rays, the Red Sox used a very different approach.
In the third inning, when the Sox scored three times to break open a 1-1 game, they did so without benefit of a hit. Without the ball leaving the infield, they found a way to score three runs.
It took a walk, a hit batsman, another walk, a passed ball, an errant throw by the Rays and a fielder’s choice for the Red Sox to pull away.
That’s what happens when you’re hot. That’s what happens when a feeling of invincibility invades your dugout. For three months, the Red Sox couldn’t figure out how to win; lately, they’ve forgotten how to lose.
“It just feels like we can’t do anything wrong right now,” said third baseman Caleb Durbin. “It feels good.”
“You have to take advantage when everything’s coming your way,” added Willson Contreras, who smoked a two-run shot in the fifth for his second homer in four games since returning from his suspension. “If we focus on the small things, we’re going to get the big results. I like the way we’re playing right now.”
When a team is as white-hot as the Red Sox are now, the dread that hung over them earlier is gone, replaced by a quiet confidence that, somehow, someway, things are going to turn out in a positive way.
How else to explain four consecutive sweeps? As impressive as 13 straight wins sounds, the notion of steamrolling four straight opponents is even more remarkable.
“It’s hard to do,” agreed interim manager Chad Tracy. “It’s hard to sweep a team in the big leagues, period. Once. The talent level (and chances are) you’re going to run into somebody, a starter who’s going to have a really good game. It’s hard to do. So to do it four times, I acknowledge it’s been impressive.”
There’s also the irony that came with finishing off the sweep of the Rays in such a fashion, beating them at their own game. The Rays, outside of Junior Caminero, don’t have a lot of power and need to do the proverbial little things to win.
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They need to make contact, put the ball in play, move runners over and take advantage of the opponent’s mistakes.
And that was the Red Sox’ playbook Sunday. The Red Sox had as many runs as they had hits, which would have been unthinkable not long ago.
“I think that’s the big difference between early on and now,” said Durbin. “In those situations, you get guys in scoring position, (we would) strikeout or popup. That’s what the Rays were doing to us earlier in the year, that’s the type of baseball they play over there and it felt really good to do it to them and take advantage of their mistakes the way they did to us early on.
“It feels good that we were able to flip the script on the season, but obviously, against them as well.”
But at Tracy’s urging, the Red Sox shifted their approach a month back and began trying to score runs any way they could. With some practice, it’s helped fuel their season turnaround.
“There was a point - I can’t give you an exact date — when we started hearing, ‘Hey, we’ve got to bunt more, get guys over, put the ball in play, grind out at-bats,’ " said Durbin. “That’s something we’ve been talking about a lot that we struggled to do early on and that’s been a big difference.”
The energy has transferred in the stands, too. Instead of fearing the worst, fans at Fenway have come to expect good results.
You can’t predict a throw from an infielder striking a baserunner heading to the plate. You don’t anticipate a bases-loaded passed ball. You don’t root for a groundout with a baserunner on third base.
But all of those things happened in the third inning, and helped account for a most unexpected rally.
“I know baseball has changed (to a more power-oriented approach) a little bit,” said Contreras. “But when you play to win and the whole team is playing to win and we’re pulling in one direction like we’ve been doing, good things are going to happen.”
Day after day, game after game, win after win.
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