Bedard: Boston's incredible run punctuated (for now) by dominant Red Sox

LOS ANGELES — They were the real deal. From start to finish.

The Boston Red Sox dominated the regular season, winning a franchise-record 108 games and turning out the lights in the AL East, seemingly, in July.

But not many people thought they were actually that good.

Maybe it was just our natural, born-in, New England fatalism. Or, you know, the fact that most people experienced the Red Sox ripping their hearts out of their chests for decades and those deep-seated scars never really ever go away, even after three titles. Long-time Red Sox fans think another 86-year drought is right around the corner.

Besides, since when does any team that doesn't include Bill Belichick and Tom Brady just plow through the competition and win world championships with seeming relative ease?

No, you start to look for flaws or potential potholes. Chris Sale hadn't been right in months. David Price ... he'll never win a postseason game. Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts hadn't accomplished anything of note in the postseason. The bullpen ... hide your eyes. Who's going to play third ... or second?

Oh, and just for good measure, the Red Sox were probably going to have to go through the Yankees and the defending champion Astros to win a world title.

A walk through the park ... this was far from that.

But it was. Actually, Boston was even more dominant in the postseason.

The Red Sox, who finished off the Los Angeles Dodgers in five games with a 5-1 victory on Sunday night, had a .685 winning percentage in the regular season. They won two out of every three games they played, and never had a four-game losing streak.

The world champion Red Sox went through the postseason with an 11-3 mark, a winning percentage of .785. They won three out of every four games they played. They never lost back-to-back games.

Dominant damage done.

"They're a great team," said Dodgers Game 5 starter and future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw, who lost twice to the Sox. "They won, I think, 108 games in the regular season. They beat two teams that also won 100 games in the postseason. And then beat us four games to one. So they're a great team, obviously. They have a lot of depth up and down the lineup. You saw guys, their starters out of the bullpen starting, short rest, whatever they did, their bullpen guys throwing the ball great. They're a great team."

The Red Sox may have had their doubters along the way, but that was only on the outside. On the inside, the Red Sox constantly were brimming in confidence. They might have done a good job hiding it, but the Red Sox knew how good they were.

"We never paid attention to the odds," said closer Craig Kimbrel. "We knew who we have in our clubhouse, and we expected to win every series."

Sure, some of that can be owned by the fact that the Red Sox had MLB's largest payroll. That never hurts. But Boston wasn't exactly hurting for cash — or talent — when it was winning the division the previous two season and then flopping in the playoffs.

And then when you consider that the Red Sox got next to nothing (compared to their expectations) from Sale (Cy Young candidate), and duo regular-season MVP favorites Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez until they already had a lead in Game 5, then you start to see why this team was so good.

"The depth," said suddenly ace setup man Joe Kelly. "We had guys sitting the bench that are perennial all-stars, guys sitting the bench that have won Cy Youngs. It’s unreal. We’re very, very loaded. It’s tough to manage a team like that if everyone doesn’t buy in and everyone bought in. No one looked back. We were unselfish. I think that’s the key. When you have a team that is that close and that tight, even if the other team has more talent, that’s tough to beat."

That's the other thing outsiders couldn't see — the closeness of this team. You can crunch all the numbers you want, but you can't measure what it means to have one guy want to pickup his teammate. To a man, it bothered these Red Sox that Nathan Eovaldi pitched his heart out in Game 3 and took the loss. It irked them when Eduardo Rodriguez came out of mothballs to give them a great start in Game 4, only to leave with a 4-1 deficit because he was left in one batter too long. They didn't like it when David Price, who might be the most beloved teammate in the clubhouse if you took a poll, kept having to answer questions about his track record.

So what did they do? They won Game 4 for Eovaldi. They put up nine runs after Rodriguez left. They put up runs to match the zeros from Price.

This team was not that way in previous seasons. You know why. And you know why it all changed when Alex Cora was named manager.

Actually, it started his first real day on the job down in Fort Myers.

"The first day we had a full practice, he brought the whole organization together and said, 'Hey, let's turn around and take a photo because we're in this together,'" said hitting coach Tim Hyers. "He went on to say a few other things, but it was like, 'This is a family.' From there, there was no separation. It was like, 'I'm in this with you. Good, bad, ugly, whatever, I'm here with you.' I thought that said a lot about who he is and brought some togetherness."

It started there, but then it continued with his decision-making that (Game 3 and 4 notwithstanding) was almost bulletproof from chill of April to the cold of October.

"You know, he's an amazing man," said Series MVP Steve Pearce, a journeyman who Cora batted third almost universally in the postseason. "He always seems to make the right moves. Whatever he says, we listen and we do it. We gelled together behind him, and everybody knew their roles because he was such a great leader, we followed him. I couldn't have asked for a better manager to play with, play for. In this great moment that we've had, it's been a great season, and he's definitely been the head of all of it, and it's great playing for him."

So now the Red Sox are world champions for the fourth time in 15 seasons. That makes 11 championships for Boston in 18 years. That title drought you had for 630 days is, finally, over.

And if this is the last one for a while — and it probably won't be with the Patriots doing their annual march, and the loaded Celtics just getting in their groove — then this was a great note to finish on.

Dominant seasons like this don't come around all that often in sports, especially such a finicky game like baseball. Maybe we didn't appreciate it along the way like we should have.

But we will now. The dominant 2018 Red Sox are and made history.