Tuesday, July 21, 2026 — thirteen days until the August 3 Trade Deadline.
On June 24, the Boston Red Sox lost 8-6 to the Rockies and fell to 32-46 — fourteen games under .500, the worst record in the American League and better than only Colorado across all of baseball. They were a lock to sell. Everyone knew it.
They have not lost since July 1.
Fourteen Straight, and Counting
Boston’s winning streak reached 14 on Monday night in Baltimore, and it took some doing. The Red Sox trailed 4-3, then 5-4, before Caleb Durbin’s go-ahead home run in the eighth inning finished off a red-hot Orioles club. Willson Contreras collected three hits and drove in two.
Tuesday’s game was postponed, which leaves the streak sitting one win short of history. The franchise record is 15 consecutive wins, set in 1946 — a mark that not even the 2018 club, which won 108 games and a World Series, came close to touching. That team maxed out at ten.
Zoom out and it’s even more absurd: 19-2 over their last 21 games.
How It Happened
The season nearly ended in April. Boston opened 10-17, and ownership responded by firing Alex Cora and five coaches, handing the job to Triple-A manager Chad Tracy on an interim basis. Nothing improved for two months. By late June, with Garrett Crochet and Roman Anthony still nowhere near returning from injury, the front office had every reason to start taking calls.
What changed is partly the roster finding its level — the pitching staff has been excellent, the offense has climbed out of its first-half hole — and partly the state of the American League. This year’s AL is genuinely weak, cluttered with .500 teams, and a single hot month is enough to relocate a club from the draft lottery to the Wild Card picture.
Now the Hard Part
Craig Breslow has thirteen days to answer a question he did not expect to be asking: how aggressive should Boston be?
There’s a real case for going big. The Red Sox now look like one of the most dangerous teams in a weak league, and while Crochet and Anthony could theoretically return for the stretch run, neither is guaranteed, and neither is likely back before late in the season. Waiting on injured players is not a deadline plan.
Two holes stand out on the roster:
- Second base — Boston ranks 28th in the majors in wRC+ (67) at the position.
- Catcher — 21st in wRC+ (79), on a team whose pitching staff deserves better.
The Names in Play
At second base, the market is workable. San Francisco’s Luis Arraez, Detroit’s Gleyber Torres and Washington’s Luis García Jr. are all plausible fits, with García the most interesting given he comes with an extra year of control and a 136 OPS+.
Behind the plate, it gets harder. This deadline’s catching market has been full of noise and short on actual availability:
- Ryan Jeffers (Twins) — a pending free agent with a .941 OPS, and realistically the only impact bat behind the plate with a strong chance of moving. The Yankees and Rays already sent scouts to watch him at Wrigley over the weekend.
- Adley Rutschman (Orioles) — Baltimore is “certainly listening,” per ESPN, especially with Samuel Basallo already signed long term. But the O’s have surged, Rutschman is on the IL with a wrist injury, and they’d want big league arms back, not prospects.
- Shea Langeliers (Athletics) — effectively off the board. Despite earlier reports the A’s were open to anything, ESPN says Oakland has told teams it has zero interest in moving him.
- Hunter Goodman (Rockies) — controllable through 2029, which is exactly why he probably isn’t going anywhere. ESPN puts the odds at 15 percent. Ken Rosenthal reports Colorado would demand multiple high-end prospects who accelerate its own timeline, a price most clubs won’t pay.
The Bottom Line
Three weeks ago the conversation in Boston was about which veterans to move and how many prospects they could bring back. Now it’s about whether a team with an interim manager and two stars on the injured list should be spending prospect capital on a division race.
Fourteen wins can do that. A fifteenth would make it very hard for Breslow to do anything but buy.
Add a comment