Home-road split, quality of opponents favor Red Sox in final four weeks

The Red Sox may be in something of a tailspin, having lost three-of-four to the Yankees, but there’s hope in the form of the remaining schedule.

Starting Monday night, the Red Sox have 25 games remaining. Of those, a full 16 of them are at Fenway, where the Red Sox own a 40-25 record, the best home record in the American League and third best in all of Major League Baseball. Only the Los Angeles Dodgers (52-16) and Arizona Diamondbacks (45-23) have better home records this season.

The Sox have one remaining road trip, and though it’s a long run – three cities, nine games over 10 days – it’s entirely in the Eastern time zone, with stops in Tampa, Baltimore and Cincinnati.

Beyond the favorable road split is the quality of the competition. Of the 25 games remaining, only seven are against teams with winning records. Those include the three-game set in Baltimore (Sept. 18-20) and the final series of the season, at home, with the first-place Houston Astros.

The rest of the games are against teams with losing records, including six with Toronto (last place in the A.L. East), six games with Tampa Bay (fourth place in A.L. East), three games with Oakland (last place in the A.L. West) and three games in Cincinnati (last place in the N.L. Central).

As the Red Sox cling to their shrinking lead over New York, they can take some comfort in the fact that the Yankees’ remaining schedule is considerably more challenging. For one thing, they’re currently in the middle of a three-city, nine-game trip to Baltimore, Texas and Tampa.

When they return home, they have big series with the Orioles (four games) and Minnesota Twins (three games), with the Twins closest to the Yankees in the wild card chase.

The one benefit for the Yankees is they finish the final week of the season with their last seven games against teams with losing records – Kansas City (a makeup game), Tampa Bay (three games) and Toronto (three games).