Fans are excited about the streaking Sox. But should they be?

Boston Globe

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TODAY'S STARTING POINT
Red Sox die-hards and casuals, skeptics and believers, welcome to the brink of the best part of baseball season: a playoff race.
We know what you're thinking. A playoff race? For the Sox? Who have been mired in mediocrity (or worse) almost every season since they last won it all in 2018, who declared this a win-now season but traded their best hitter in June,who have been in similar situations in recent Julys but petered out shortly thereafter?
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Believe it. Or, at least, feel comfortable in allowing yourself to believe it. Stay open-minded. It's more fun that way.
Only the results on the field over the next 10 weeks and 64 games will decide the fate of the 2025 Red Sox, but at this juncture, as they return from the All-Star break to take on the Cubs Friday afternoon, they are better positioned than they have been at any time this decade.
Think back to mid-March. The talk of Sox camp was newly acquired stars Garrett Crochet and Alex Bregman, plus the youth movement, especially the Big Three of Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, and Kristian Campbell. For the first time in a bunch of years, the team seemed like it could actually be quite good.
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At that point, anybody involved would have signed up for where the Red Sox stand now: 53-45, three games behind the first-place Blue Jays in the AL East, and in possession of the second AL wild-card spot. If they play, on average, for the next 2½ months like they have for the past 3½, they will qualify for October.
The operative phrase there is
on average
. The Sox' eventful, unpredictable first half or so of the season featured lots of lows and even more highs. They called up Anthony, the top prospect in all of baseball, and dealt Rafael Devers, a homegrown fan favorite slugger, to the Giants. They have had a .500 record 16 times. They lost six consecutive games as recently as late June, then won 10 in a row right before the All-Star break.
Yes, six of those 10 games came against terrible teams (the Nationals and Rockies) and the other four came against the Rays, who were only slightly better than the Sox at the time. But still, 10 straight is 10 straight. There's a reason only two other clubs have done that this year: It is awfully hard to do. And as the baseball truism goes, good teams beat up on bad teams. The Red Sox have done exactly that.
If wait-and-see is your preferred approach, we won't try to talk you out of it. There should be some clarity by the end of the month. In the leadup to the July 31 trade deadline, the Red Sox resume their season with nine consecutive games against the National League division leaders: three at the Cubs, three at the Phillies, and three at home versus the Dodgers, the defending World Series champions.
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'A gauntlet,' chief baseball officer Craig Breslow called it.
Breslow, by the way, is under significant pressure this month. He has said that he expects the Sox to be buyers at the deadline this year.
Making major midseason additions to the roster buoys not just the fans, but the players themselves. It is a front office's way of saying: Good job so far, here's some help, now go get it done.
And not adding has the opposite effect.
In 2021, for example, Chaim Bloom's Red Sox were kind of good earlier than expected. Instead of going all in, though, management's only notable acquisition was slugger Kyle Schwarber. They wound up losing in the ALCS that year — an out-of-nowhere run that did not lead to future success after what the players viewed as marginal moves.
'We got to the deadline and didn't get anybody,' former Sox slugger and DH J.D. Martinez told me about that summer. 'We needed help and we had to grind all the way back. Fortunately, we snuck into the wild card, but we saw teams all around us get better and we didn't … [Bringing in help is] definitely big. I know teams feel it, clubhouses feel it.'
Last year, Breslow's moves at the trade deadline were more like a quarter-measure. The Sox brought in pitchers James Paxton, Lucas Sims, and Luis Garcia and catcher Danny Jansen. Remember them? Exactly.
This year, the Red Sox will likely go bigger.
'The way I see the trade deadline … when teams add and you stay put, it's not that you got worse. It's just [that] other teams took a step forward,' manager Alex Cora said recently. 'We haven't done that in a few years here.'
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Plan on this year being different.
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