Donnelly: Just when you think they're dead, the Red Sox show a sign of life

Let's start by addressing the elephant –er Green Monster in the room. 

The Red Sox are still complete long shots to make the playoffs. Entering Wednesday, Boston's odds stood at 12.4 percent, according to FanGraphs. 

Even if they made up ground with a heroic 7-5 comeback win in Houston after Seattle and Toronto both lost, the Sox still remain 4.0 games out of the final Wild Card spot with roughly five weeks to go in the season. 

To say they're "underdogs," would still be quite an understatement.

Just a few hours ago, the Red Sox appeared to be dead in the water.

They followed up a strong sweep of the unraveling Yankees with perhaps two of their sloppiest games of the season to fall behind quickly in a pivotal series with the Astros. Errors abounding and an utter lack of timely hitting undid good-enough pitching and befell Boston at every turn in the Space City. 

it seemed to be the same case again on Wednesday when the Sox fell into an early 3-0 hole with the Astros teeing off on Chris Sale early on in his outing. 

But as Sale settled in and managed to power his way through five innings, Boston's defense held up while the offense scratched across runs in key moments to hang around, thanks to the first glimmers of production with runners in scoring position in what felt like ages. Soon enough an ice-cold Trevor Story cut into the deficit with his first RBI of the season. Not to be outdone, youngster Wilyer Abreu's first career RBI tied the game at four apiece. 

In the seventh inning, Garrett Whitlock all but proved that Wednesday was shaping up to be different than the first two games of the series with Houston. Alex Bregman was going to be out no matter what after interfering with Connor Wong on a foul pop-up, but in a bang-bang play with his catcher tied up, Whitlock saw no time to waste, sprinting beyond the plate before making a sprawling grab in what might just be the most athletic play by a Red Sox pitcher this season. 

"I just saw the ball up and was pointing to Wong. I didn't see that it was called interference," Whitlock told reporters in Houston. "So, I just saw that he wasn't going to get to it, so I just ran after it. Lucky enough to make the play."

It was an emphatic finish to a pair of strong scoreless innings for Whitlock.

"I just wanted to compete and throw up zeroes, and try not to get too high or too low all the time," he added.

The right-hander's hustle was a stark contrast to the listless efforts populating the diamond on Monday and Tuesday. 

Chris Martin followed suit by grinding away in an extended eighth-inning outing, and Nick Pivetta put forth a gutsy performance in relief of the injured Kenley Jansen in the ninth. 

But with the game still tied, the biggest heroics were yet to come after the strong performances from the hurlers and error-free defense. A foul ball on a low, inside, 99-mile-per-hour sinker drilled Adam Duvall on his right ankle in the top of the 10th, hobbling him for over three minutes before he could step back into the box. On the next pitch, another hard sinker to a similar spot, Duvall cranked a three-run dinger over the left-field wall for the go-ahead runs before Boston held on in the bottom of the 10th for the victory with their season seemingly on the brink. 

"Honestly, I don't know how I hit it after what I did," Duvall said in the postgame walk-off interview on NESN. "I was joking with the guys, saying 'I'm not gonna take my shoe off tonight' cause it squared me up. I don't know... just tried to put a good swing on it. ... He's throwing me turbo sinkers in there. You gotta think, after I foul one off my foot, as an ego pitch, he's probably trying to go back in there. I was looking at it in there, and got it."

With his third home run in as many games, Duvall broke out the proverbial paddles and kept the Sox' hopes on life support.

"You've gotta fight this time of year," Duvall said. "We know how important each game is. So, we knew how important tonight was, and we ended up scratching and clawing our way to the win. That's what you've got to do this time of year."

After the previous two disappointing outings, the Red Sox returned to the baseball that they'll tell you they believe they're capable of playing in order to catch lightning in a bottle, giving themselves a chance to split the series with the Astros on Thursday.

While it may have been a positive sign with some ground made up in the race for a postseason berth, the Sox still understand they very much have a demanding task at hand if they wish to play beyond the Oct. 1 regular-season finale. 

"It was better than the one on Sunday, to be honest with you, especially knowing what happened today," Alex Cora said of the win after the Blue Jays and Mariners' losses. "I'm not gonna lie. We're watching. We gained ground, but we've got to come tomorrow and [split] the series. If we [split] the series, it's a great road trip for us, then we've got to go home and keep grinding."

Whitlock and Duvall proved there's still a pulse for this Red Sox team, one that has been riding the ups and downs of its own rollercoaster from city to city. It'll take almost a perfectly smooth ride the rest of the way to see the carnival roll on into the postseason, with quite a bit of help from the teams ahead of them experiencing their own twists and turns on the ride. 

Nevertheless, the Sox are still alive, but they're barely breathing with the odds still completely stacked against them. Realistically, they may simply be marching toward a slow, painful death that awaits a team as wildly inconsistent as this one. 

Either way, the heart is still somehow beating for these underdogs, even if they're staring down a massive uphill climb, one that would rival a final push up to Mount Washington on a blustery day.

Trevor Story said, "It's big. You know, obviously, we have our work cut out for us, but we know the type of group we have here. We know we're capable. You've got to keep taking advantage of these kinds of nights when the teams lose in front of you. So at the end of the day, we just have to continue to control what we can. I know it's pretty cliche, but I think if we do that, then we'll be the right baseball, and we'll be where we want to be."