Maybe, just maybe, the Red Sox have finally woken up from their second half slumber…
Boston entered Monday’s series opener with AL East-leading Baltimore with plenty of work to do trailing Minnesota by four games (with Detroit and Seattle a half-game above them) in the AL wild-card race.
For once, they actually played like it…
The Sox bats stuck early and often, starting with four runs in the first three innings — two coming on a Rob Refsnyder two-run blast to dead center with one out in the third, followed by another Tyler O’Neill solo blast to the Monster to (momentarily) tie Rafael Devers for the team lead with 28.
Things went so well, in fact, that Refsnyder and O’Neill didn’t just go back to back once… but twice.
This is NOT a replay.
— MLB (@MLB) September 10, 2024
Rob Refsnyder and Tyler O'Neill go back-to-back for the @RedSox for the second time tonight! pic.twitter.com/nsCBJ6fIIs
The end result was a 12-3 blowout victory after the Sox padded their lead with four more runs in the sixth, two in the sevenths and two in the eighth. All told, the Sox recorded 15 hits, including four homers, with four batters recording multi-hit games — including Ceddanne Rafaela, who contributed a two-run double and a two-run single.
“Obviously we’re still chasing a couple games,” Refsnyder said. “I don’t know what the result of the Angels-Twins game was.”
“Three out,” I informed Ref.
“We’ve just got to keep going,” Refsnyder continued after I asked about his confidence in the bats being able to carry it forward. “You know, unfortunately, the offense has stalled (the) past couple weeks. It sounds very cliche to say, but every point of the year offenses go through stretches like so. So unfortunately it was during a really important time.”
Refsnyder finished 4 for 4 with five RBIs — both career highs — and credits the Sox’s baseball ops staff with helping him finally break out.
“I’ve been fricking so bad,” Refsnyder said. “So it’s been a grind, it’s been a lot of frustrating nights. A lot of credit to the hitting department. They’ve stayed up countless hours trying to help me out, figure some stuff out. So it felt really, really good to kind of breakthrough.”
The Sox had to show some fight in this one, too, after finding themselves in an early 1-0 hole following Anthony Santander’s RBI single in the first. But to their credit, they came right back to even the score in the home first on O’Neill’s 6-3 groundout.
Brayan Bello battled, turning in 5 1/3 innings of two-run, three-hit ball with five strikeouts — but also a career-high-tying five walks. Hence the “battle” descriptor. Bello threw 62 of his 101 pitches for strikes and worked his way out of a couple of hairy situations.
“The stuff, it’s been really good throughout the season. The difference is the command of his pitches,” Alex Cora said of Bello. “When he’s commanding, he’s really good. When he’s struggling, you know, that happens. But he made some big pitches.”
It was an encouraging start to an important series coming off a less-than-ideal weekend series win over the approaching-historically-inept 112-loss White Sox (and I say that because, come on, you couldn’t even sweep ‘em despite having a five-run lead going into the home ninth…).
Our friends in Anaheim helped the cause with a 6-2 L.A. win over the Twins, while even the hated Yankees contributed to the cause with a 10-4 rout of the Royals. The Tigers and Mariners were off, so the Sox were able to leapfrog those two juggernauts to put themselves three games out and back in the pole… for the AL’s “best loser” position.
Again, if you’re going to overcome the hole you’ve put yourselves in, winning now and winning often is the only way to do it. The games behind number doesn’t look as threatening as it once did recently, yet this team has been doing the (just below) .500 dance the entire way since the All-Star break…
At this juncture, if the Sox can keep themselves within three-ish games of Minnesota entering that potentially pivotal three-game series with the Twins on Sept. 20-22 at Fenway, that will probably be their best bet.
But even if you did sweep ‘em, which feels extremely unlikely, you’re not even guaranteed to be in while still at the mercy of the Kansas Citys, Detroits and Seattles of the world. It just isn’t an ideal place to be in, but winning keeps the door open for that little sliver of hope.
“We’re right there. Still right there — I don’t know how,” Cora said. “But they show up every day, they work hard, and they did an amazing job offensively today.”
Mission accomplished, at least on Monday…
Gethin Coolbaugh is a columnist for Boston Sports Journal. Follow him @GethinCoolbaugh on X/Twitter.