After dropping three of four to the Rays at home last week, I wouldn’t imagine that many — myself included — had particularly high hopes for the Red Sox’s second act this week in Tampa Bay.
Not only that, but the Sox went on to drop two of three against an inferior Cardinals team to begin their brief six-game road trip. Things weren’t exactly shaping up, and there was talk about the wheels starting to fall off — *raises hand* guilty as charged.
Now, one week later, the same Sox are one win shy of matching a season-best five-game win streak after a surprising three-game sweep of the Rays heading into this weekend’s three-game set with Milwaukee at Fenway Park.
Instead of continuing to struggle for answers against the Rays, Boston came out on the offensive — literally. The Sox averaged six runs per game, scoring five in each of the first two games before holding on for an 8-5 win in the Wednesday finale, to build off an 11-3 outburst in last Sunday’s win to avoid a sweep in St. Louis.
It was Boston’s first sweep in Tampa since 2019 — but don’t try to tell Alex Cora it’s the last time his team has had success at the Trop, as the skipper was quick to interject when asked about his team’s newfound success in Tampa during his weekly radio appearance on WEEI’s Jones & Mego with Arcand show.
“Nah, nah, nah, nah… we (won) the series, but we’ve won here before,” Cora interrupted. “I remember we beat them in ’21 … in the playoffs. We just, it’s a different group. We’re more athletic, kind of like good for this environment in Tropicana Field. You know, the turf and the roof, and it’s so spacious in the outfield, and we’re better.”
Cora took his defense even deeper, citing the team’s improved starting pitching as the reason they are able to compete with the Rays.
“The other thing, and this is something that I’ve been saying all along, it feels like every night the starter is gonna go six innings for us. We’re pitching toe-to-toe with them, and we’ve been able to beat ‘em twice here (before Thursday’s series finale) and three out of six, which is not great, but is actually better than the last two years. We’ve got a chance here to sweep them and finish the road trip on a high note and … then be ready for the Brewers. It should be a cool weekend at Fenway.”
They would go on to sweep the Rays, bringing their season record against Tampa to 4-3 with six games to play. Three more wins would guarantee the Sox a season series victory against their most prominent division rival of the past decade or so.
Winning series against teams in your own division is always a good thing, but these do not appear to be the same Rays that we've seen in recent years. Like the Sox, Tampa has been dancing around .500 all season, and their series loss to Boston dropped them to 25-26 and 9 1/2 games out of first in the AL East.
That represents a stark contrast compared to a Tampa team that has won 90 or more games in four of the last six seasons (they won 86 in 2022 and went 40-20 to win the division during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season).
I’m not attempting to discredit Boston’s success over Tampa this season — again, beating teams in the AL East is definitely better than not beating teams in the AL East. But it is important to put the Rays’ current situation into perspective.
Boston is well on its way to claiming superiority over Tampa this season. And by the looks of it, the Sox appear better than Toronto, who they won’t see for the first time this season until the middle of June (and that’s too bad, because the Jays are losers of five of their last nine games and are 9-16 since a 13-10 start).
OK, so you’re better than Tampa and Toronto. Unfortunately, that only puts you smack dab in the middle of the AL East. There’s still second-place Baltimore, who the Sox will get another crack at next weekend during a three-game set in Baltimore. Then there’s the big, bad first-place Yankees, who are surging along with an American League-leading 35-17 record — 8-2 in their last 10. Fortunately, the Sox also don’t have to see them until mid-June, so there’s still some time to get their act together and build off their recent momentum.
A good starting point would be this weekend’s series with the Brewers, who sit atop the AL Central standings. Boston is seemingly catching Milwaukee at a good time, too, as the Brew Crew are coming off back-to-back series losses against Houston then Miami and have lost four of six overall.
Winning the series against Milwaukee would put the Sox at least three games over .500 (and likely back into the AL wild-card picture) going in the Baltimore rematch. Boston will send Kutter Crawford to the mound for Friday night’s series opener, followed by Nick Pivetta on Saturday then Tanner Houck on Sunday.
The Brewers won’t be sending any Cy Young-caliber arms to the mound during the series, so if the offense can maintain their newfound rhythm and the pitchers continue to do what they’ve done all season, the outlook appears good for a positive weekend to cap off a solid week that may have put the Sox back on the right course.
The marathon continues on Friday…
Gethin Coolbaugh is a columnist for Boston Sports Journal. Follow him @GethinCoolbaugh on X/Twitter.