Maybe This Is What a Playoff Team Looks Like

(Mary Schwalm/Associated Press)

Last week I asked a pretty simple question: Where did the bats go?

Apparently they went home.

That’s about the best explanation I have.

After watching the Red Sox stumble through another stretch where hitting a baseball suddenly looked like advanced calculus, they returned to Fenway Park and almost immediately became a different team. Again.

Because, naturally, this is what the 2026 Boston Red Sox do.

They make you worry. They make you question everything you thought you had figured out. They make you wonder if that great run was a mirage. Then, just when you're preparing yourself for another collapse, they win five out of six games and send you back in the other direction.

As you know, I have officially given up trying to predict them.

And maybe that's finally the point.

The Red Sox opened this homestand by destroying Arizona 11-1. Then they beat the Diamondbacks 9-4 the following night. The offense that had disappeared during the road trip suddenly scored 20 runs in two days. Adley Rutschman hit his first home run as a member of the Red Sox in the second game, Mickey Gasper continued his bizarre and wonderful little power surge, and everybody seemed to start hitting at once.

So there's your answer.

The bats were apparently hiding somewhere underneath Fenway Park.

Of course, because nothing can ever be completely easy with this team, Boston lost the final game against Arizona, 7-6 in 10 innings. They had a chance to sweep, couldn't finish it and suddenly there was at least a little reason to wonder again.

Because we're Red Sox fans.

That's what we do.

But then came San Francisco.

And I think those three games might have told us more about this team than the two offensive explosions against Arizona did.

Friday night had everything attached to it before the game even started because Rafael Devers was back at Fenway.

That was going to be the story.

How would the crowd react? How would Devers react? Would he homer? Would it feel strange seeing him standing on the other side?

The answers were basically yes, yes, yes and definitely yes.

Devers did homer in his return to Fenway, which seemed almost too perfect. Of course he did. If you wrote that into a movie script somebody would probably tell you it was a little too obvious.

But the Red Sox won anyway.

Willson Contreras launched an absolutely ridiculous three-run homer off Logan Webb, a Statcast-projected 452-foot shot that left his bat at 116 mph, and Boston took the opener 6-4. Wilyer Abreu had three hits, including an RBI triple, and Aroldis Chapman closed it out.

Nice win.

Good atmosphere.

Fun night at Fenway.

Then Saturday happened.

And Saturday is the game that made me think there might actually be something different about this team.

The Red Sox did basically nothing offensively for eight innings.

Again.

They trailed 2-0 entering the bottom of the ninth, which isn't exactly where you want to be when you're trying to convince everybody your offense has returned.

Wilyer Abreu had struck out four times.

Four.

Boston had already wasted a bases-loaded, nobody-out opportunity in the eighth inning.

It had all the ingredients of one of those incredibly frustrating Red Sox losses where you spend the final hour wondering how many different ways one team can fail with runners on base.

Then they didn't.

Eli White pinch-hit and knocked in a run.

Nick Sogard doubled off the Green Monster to tie it.

Abreu came up with the bases loaded and hit a ground ball to first. Bryce Eldridge made the play and threw home, but catcher Andrew Knizner was pulled off the plate.

Eli White scored.

Game over.

Red Sox 3, Giants 2.

Think about that for a second.

Abreu went from striking out four times to being at the center of the walk-off celebration.

That feels strangely appropriate for this entire Red Sox season.

Terrible.

Terrible.

Terrible.

Terrible.

HEY, WE WON!

I don't know how else to describe these guys.

And then Sunday afternoon they finished the job.

The Giants jumped out to a 3-0 lead. Again, Boston had every opportunity to simply take the series win, call the homestand successful and move on.

Instead, they came back.

Nick Sogard hit a 415-foot home run over the Green Monster. Mickey Gasper doubled home Connor Wong. Ceddanne Rafaela drove Gasper in. The Sox eventually won 5-4 and completed the sweep.

Jake Bennett gave them seven innings and struck out six.

Boston finished the homestand 5-1.

And this is where I'm starting to look at the Red Sox a little differently.

Not because they won five of six.

We've already seen them win a lot of games in a short period of time this season. We've seen the 15-game winning streak. We've seen the nine-game winning streak. We've seen the ridiculous summer stretch when they won 27 of 30 and nine consecutive series.

We know they can get hot.

That's no longer the question.

The question now is whether they can be good when they're not hot.

That's the difference.

Good teams aren't going to score 11 runs every night. They aren't going to have everybody hitting at the same time. They aren't going to roll through September winning every game by six runs.

October certainly doesn't work that way.

Eventually you're going to be down 2-0 in the ninth inning.

Eventually your best hitter that day is going to be 0-for-4.

Eventually your starting pitcher won't have his best stuff.

Eventually somebody you've barely thought about all season is going to have to get a hit.

That's baseball.

And increasingly, this Red Sox team seems comfortable living there.

That's encouraging.

There are still things that make me nervous. Obviously.

Roman Anthony working his way back is a big one. Trevor Story's return from sports hernia surgery is another. Masataka Yoshida's hamstring injury could potentially cost him the rest of the regular season. The roster isn't exactly entering the stretch run completely healthy.

But somehow the lineup keeps finding people.

Mickey Gasper suddenly starts hitting home runs.

Nick Sogard comes through.

Eli White gets a pinch-hit RBI.

Jake Bennett gives you seven innings.

Wilyer Abreu can strike out four times and still help win the game.

Those aren't necessarily the names I expected to be writing about in late August when we were discussing whether this team should buy or sell at the trade deadline two months ago.

But here we are.

Again.

The Red Sox have gone from a team I thought should seriously consider selling, to a team that went on a ridiculous winning streak, to a team that finally convinced me to believe, to a team that immediately made me regret believing, and now back to a team that looks dangerous.

I'm exhausted.

But I'm also enjoying it.

And now we are getting very close to the point where the conversation has to change.

We're almost done talking about whether the Red Sox are "for real."

It doesn't matter anymore.

There isn't enough season left for philosophical debates.

They are in this. Period.

Now it's about getting into the tournament.

Win the series in front of you. Don't worry about looking dominant. Don't worry about whether the Yankees look better on paper or whether Tampa Bay has been more consistent. Don't worry about convincing anybody you're a World Series team.

Just keep winning games.

Ugly ones count.

Comebacks count.

Walk-offs count.

Eleven-run explosions count.

A ground ball that pulls the catcher off home plate counts exactly the same in the standings as a 450-foot home run.

And maybe that's what I've been missing while trying to figure this team out all summer.

Maybe the Red Sox don't need to become some completely different, perfectly consistent version of themselves before October.

Maybe this is them.

Messy.

Young.

Occasionally infuriating.

Sometimes explosive.

Sometimes completely unable to hit.

And somehow still hanging around at the end.

A week ago I wanted to know where the bats went.

This week, I have another question.

What if this is actually what a playoff team looks like?

I'm not saying a World Series team.

Not yet.

Come on. I've learned at least something this season.

But a playoff team?

Yeah.

I'm starting to think that's exactly what we're watching.

Written by: Tim Hourihan

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