McAdam: After stumbling last weekend, Red Sox resume winning ones they should

BALTIMORE -- Given that they have more wins than any team in the game, there haven't been a lot of valleys to the Red Sox' season. But last weekend at Fenway qualified as perhaps a low point.

The Red Sox somehow figured out a way to drop two out of three games to the god-awful Chicago White Sox, with their bats suddenly silenced.

But at Camden Yards, the Red Sox made sure not to make the same mistake twice.

If the White Sox qualify as poor, then the Baltimore Orioles are truly an abomination. Entering Wednesday, they were the only team in either league with a winning percentage under .300, having lost their last six in a row and 13-of-15. Worse, the Orioles had to dip into their minor league system at the 11th hour to find a starting pitcher after scheduled starter Andrew Cashner was scratched with a back injury, pitting Yefry Ramirez against Chris Sale.

"What do you suppose the betting line is in Vegas for this one?'' wondered an Orioles official minutes before first pitch.

The Red Sox then went out and did what they needed to do: demonstrate no mercy, pin another loss on the hapless O's and leave town with a 5-1 win and a series sweep.

There are no prizes for beating up on baseball's worst team. It's what the Red Sox are supposed to do. But as recently as a few days ago, they lost a series to a team nearly as bad, a reminder that, even when the schedule-maker delivers you a gift, you still have to earn your wins.

Lesson learned.

The first two wins of the series weren't pretty. It took 12 innings for the Sox to push a run across Monday night, and when it did, it came with a sacrifice fly. And Tuesday, all that was missing was some fancy wrapping paper and a nice big bow, as the Orioles walked home one run and balked in another.

Still, the Red Sox successfully stepped on the home team's throat Wednesday afternoon. No mercy.

"When you're going into the last day of a series and you've won the one, two or three games before that,'' said Sale, "sweeps are big. They really are. Everybody likes to talk about games at the end of the year, August and September, all that stuff, but the games right now count just as much. So anytime you can sweep a team -- especially at the start of a long road trip -- it's a boost of energy for us.

"We had a bad series, we really did, against Chicago. There's no really no other way to put it. We just didn't get the job done. To bounce back after that, come in here, get a sweep...it's nice. The White Sox series didn't define us as a team. We just kind of had an off series. It's going to happen. We're not going to be perfect every time. But to bounce back after that, on the road, after something like that, I think it shows who we are as a team.''

Major League Baseball, more than ever before, has become stratified. Except for maybe two or three teams flirting with the .500 mark, there's a handful of really good teams and another bunch acting as bottom feeders, neither invested nor interested in winning. For the elite teams, the trick is to leave as few wins against the dregs of the league on the table as possible.

Beat them up, bank the wins and move on.

Except for a four-day stretch on the last homestand -- a loss to Detroit in the final game of that series included -- the Sox have done well to take full advantage. They're 3-1 against last-place Texas, 2-1 against Kansas City and Detroit, 7-2 against Toronto, 9-4 against Tampa Bay and 9-1 against Baltimore.

Add in the slip-up against the White Sox, and that results in a .734 winning percentage against teams with a losing record heading into Wednesday's action.

When life gives you lemons, goes the saying, make lemonade.

And when the baseball gods give you lemons on the schedule, squeeze every win out of them that you can.

That's what the Red Sox did over the last few days here, which was not only advisable but necessary. Starting Thursday, 16 of the next 19 games are against playoff contenders.

Playtime is over, but the Sox had their fun while they could.