The Streak Is Over. The Red Sox Aren’t.

(Credit: The Boston Globe, Creator: Jim Davis)

Well, that was fun.

For 15 games, the Red Sox forgot how to lose. Every night brought another win, another reason to believe and another opportunity for those of us who had spent most of the season complaining about this team to quietly delete a few old thoughts.

Not that I deleted anything. The internet never forgets anyway.

You will recall that, last week, I finally surrendered. I stopped trying to figure out how the Red Sox went from looking hopeless to looking unbeatable, and decided to just enjoy it. No more wondering when the next collapse was coming. No more attempting to determine whether they should buy, sell or simply hide from the trade deadline altogether.

I jumped aboard.

Naturally, the winning streak ended almost immediately.

That feels about right.

The Red Sox tied the franchise record by winning their 15th consecutive game, defeating Baltimore 6-3 in the first game of a doubleheader. A few hours later, they lost the second game 5-1. Just like that, a streak that had lasted since the beginning of July was over. Fifteen straight wins, matching a record established by the 1946 Red Sox, but no 16th. No new record. No endless summer of victories.

But something strange happened after the streak ended.

Nothing.

The walls did not collapse. Fenway Park did not sink into the ground. The players did not suddenly remember that they were supposed to be the frustrating, inconsistent and occasionally unwatchable team we saw during the first few months of the season.

They just kept playing.

More importantly, they kept winning.

Boston returned to Fenway for three games against Toronto and took two of three. They won Friday night 6-4, were completely shut down in a 6-0 loss Saturday, then came back Sunday and finished the series with a convincing 6-1 win.

Under normal circumstances, taking two of three from a Toronto team sitting well below .500 would not inspire much celebration. It is what a playoff contender should do. Win the series, move on and prepare for the next one.

But these are not normal circumstances, and the Red Sox have not been a normal team.

For most of this season, every good moment felt temporary. A series win was followed by a series loss. A strong road trip was followed by a miserable homestand. Just when it seemed safe to become interested again, they would lose four of five and remind everyone why they had stopped paying attention.

That is why the Toronto series mattered.

The 15-game streak was exciting. The response after it ended may have been more revealing.

Anyone can feel confident when they have won 15 straight. Everything seems easier. A bloop falls in. A groundball finds a hole. A relief pitcher escapes a bases-loaded jam. The big hit comes at exactly the right time. The final out settles into a glove and everybody pours onto the field again.

It starts to feel automatic, even though baseball is never automatic.

The real challenge comes after the first loss, when the feeling of invincibility disappears and the normal worries return.

Friday’s victory showed that the Red Sox were not planning to mourn the end of the streak. Then came Saturday.

Dylan Cease allowed one hit and struck out 12 as Toronto beat Boston 6-0. The Red Sox offense, which had spent much of July looking dangerous and relentless, suddenly looked helpless. It was exactly the kind of game that could make a skeptical fan sit back and think, “Okay, here we go again.”

One loss ends the streak. Another bad loss begins a trend.

Or at least it used to.

Instead, the Red Sox came back Sunday and won 6-1. Jarren Duran collected three hits and drove in two runs. Wilyer Abreu added an RBI double. Ranger Suárez returned from the injured list and gave Boston four scoreless innings before the bullpen carried the game the rest of the way.

It was not dramatic. There was no desperate ninth-inning comeback or wild walk-off celebration. They did not need one.

They simply played a good baseball game and won a series.

Maybe that is the most encouraging part of all this.

The Red Sox do not need to win another 15 games in a row. It would be enjoyable, obviously, and I would not object. But winning streaks like that are rare for a reason. Boston’s 15-game run tied a franchise record that had stood for 80 years. Expecting anything similar again would be ridiculous.

What they need now is something less spectacular and far more important.

Consistency.

That word seemed almost sarcastic when applied to this team earlier in the year. The Red Sox could look like a contender for three days and a last-place team for the next seven. There was always some new problem appearing just as an old one had supposedly been solved.

Now they are beginning to look like a team capable of surviving an ordinary loss.

That does not sound terribly exciting, but it is one of the differences between a team having a hot stretch and a team becoming genuinely good.

Good teams lose 6-0. Good teams occasionally get dominated by an opposing starter. Good teams go through nights when nobody hits, the starting pitcher struggles and the game is basically over before the seventh-inning stretch.

They just do not allow one of those nights to turn into a lost week.

Boston enters the final week of July at 54-50, seven and a half games behind New York in the American League East and holding the second wild-card position. They had also produced a plus-46 run differential, suggesting that this surge was not built entirely on luck or a string of narrow escapes.

Think about how absurd that would have sounded a month ago.

The question then was not whether the Red Sox could make the playoffs. It was whether they should start trading recognizable players and preparing for another attempt next year.

The season felt close to over, even if the calendar insisted otherwise.

Now the conversation has completely changed.

The Red Sox are not trying to convince themselves that they are technically still alive. They are occupying a playoff spot. They are not hoping to sneak into the edge of the race before the trade deadline. They have forced themselves directly into the middle of it.

That creates a new kind of pressure.

The players have done their part. They turned a season that looked dead into one that matters. They erased a losing record, climbed into the wild-card picture and gave the front office a reason to add rather than subtract.

No, that does not mean Boston should empty the farm system for a two-month rental. Fifteen consecutive victories should not cause everyone involved to lose all sense of reason.

The Red Sox still have flaws, and three remarkable weeks do not erase everything that happened before them.

But standing still is no longer a satisfying option either.

This team has earned some help.

The front office should be looking for another reliable arm, additional depth and any reasonable improvement that can strengthen the roster without damaging the future. There is a difference between reckless spending and recognizing an opportunity. The Red Sox now have an opportunity.

That may be the biggest thing the winning streak changed.

It did not just change the standings. It changed expectations.

A month ago, simply playing meaningful games in September might have felt like progress. Now that would be disappointing. Once a team reaches a playoff position and demonstrates that it can win 15 consecutive games, the standard has to move.

The Red Sox are no longer a strange little comeback story that we can watch without expecting anything. They have made themselves responsible for what happens next.

So have the people running the team.

I still do not know exactly what the Red Sox are. I am done pretending otherwise. Maybe they are a legitimate playoff team. Maybe they are still riding the final waves of an incredible hot streak. Maybe another downturn is coming, because baseball usually finds a way to humble everyone eventually.

But losing the streak did not send them backward.

They won the next game. They survived an ugly loss. They won the game after that and took another series.

That is not as thrilling as 15 straight victories. There are no franchise records involved and no reason to preserve the box score forever.

It may, however, be more sustainable.

The streak was the invitation to believe again. What the Red Sox do now will determine whether we were right to accept it.

For the first time all season, one loss no longer feels like the beginning of the end.

The winning streak is over.

The Red Sox, apparently, are not.

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