The Elias Sports Bureau, which serves as the official statisticians of Major League Baseball, declared that Thursday's game with the Baltimore Orioles -- one that was rescheduled from the first homestand of the season, wiped out because of the lockout -- constituted a "series.''
In turn, that means that the Red Sox; 4-3 victory over the O's constituted a series win. And taking things to their illogical conclusion, it also, technically, represented a series sweep.
All of which seems absurd on the face of it. How can a single game be classified as a series? Or even more strangely, how can winning one game translate into a series sweep?
Thus, though it's mid-August, the Red Sox have their first "series'' win over an American League East opponent this season, improving them to 1-11-1.
And silly though it may be, it represented a step -- a tiny one, to be sure -- in the right direction.
"They were ahead of us, right, so we can gained ground today,'' said Alex Cora. "We know what's going on. I can tell you the schedule probably for the rest of the season -- not (just) our schedule, but a lot of teams' schedules. The math doesn't help us, but when (contending) teams are playing against each other, we have to win. We have to win. We haven't done that for a month and we're still there.''
That, at the end of the day, is the amazing thing. For as bad as the Red Sox have been since early July, they haven't completely played themselves out of the race, try though they might. Even after going 5-15 in one 20 game stretch, the Red Sox are just three games under. 500 and only 4.5 games out of the wild card race in the American League.
The standings show a handful of teams between the Red Sox and the third wild card spot -- Baltimore, Minnesota, Chicago -- but in the expanded playoff format approved for this season, being near the break-even point is good enough to hang around the playoff picture.
If a picture were to be taken of the current playoff field, the Red Sox would be blurry, out of focus and not easy to recognize. But they'd be in the picture, and for now, that's good enough.
The Sox host the New York Yankees, and if there's a good time to be matched up against a team 30 games over .500, that time is now. The Yankees have lost eight of their last 10, have lost 19 of their last 32 and have ceded their spot as owners of the best record in the American League to the fast-charging Houston Astros.
The Yankees are finishing up a strangely routed trip that took them from St. Louis to Seattle, and finally, to Boston. Maybe the Sox can capitalize on their fatigue.
After that, a winnable week beckons with visits to Pittsburgh and Baltimore. By then, the Sox will be welcoming back Kiké Hernández and perhaps Trevor Story. Some additional bullpen arms may be returning from IL stints, improving the overall depth.
But it will be a decidedly uphill climb. There are holes here, including one behind the plate, created at the deadline with the senseless sell-off of Christian Vazquez.
But a lineup with Hernandez back in center, Story returned to second, and the added value of newcomers Tommy Pham and Eric Hosmer would be no joke. And the schedule, while arduous, will provide them with more opportunities.
The Sox' ineptitude in the last month has put them in a most unenviable spot. Unless they have another magical month like the one they experienced in June, it would seem that any playoff push would qualify as "too little, too late.''
But for one night, with the music blaring in the clubhouse and the satisfaction of one well-played victory fresh in their minds, their manager, at least, spied an opening.
The Red Sox are in the back of the pack. There is a lot of ground to make up and almost no margin for error. They are greatly flawed, but so, too, are the others bunched with them.
Never mind calling a single game a series, or even a sweep. They won exactly one game, and they had to hold on for dear life to achieve that modest goal.
But they managed to move up a length Thursday night and liked how it felt.