Aroldis Chapman entered the ninth inning Monday at Fenway Park to protect a 6-5 lead over the Baltimore Orioles after Caleb Durbin provided the advantage with a two-out home run in the eighth. Chapman walked Colton Cowser but recorded back-to-back strikeouts before Gunnar Henderson doubled off the Green Monster. With runners on second and third, Chapman got two quick strikes on Tyler O’Neill and climbed to a 101.6-mph fastball — the hardest pitch he had thrown all season. O’Neill lined the ball toward left, only to be robbed when shortstop Tsung-Che Cheng shaded that way and reached above his head to secure the final out, completing the Red Sox’s 14th straight victory, one shy of Boston’s 1946 mark, according to the report.
The streak carries several notable markers. It is the longest in the majors this season and extended Boston’s run to nine straight wins against AL East opponents, the club’s longest such run since 2016. The team has recorded six comeback wins in July, tied with the Brewers for the most in the month, according to the report.
Boston’s pitching staff has a 1.98 ERA during the streak, including three shutouts, while the lineup is hitting .255/.341/.461 with 22 home runs and averaging 5.9 runs per game. The team had averaged 4.0 runs per game before the surge and totaled 73 home runs in its first 85 games, according to the report.
The turnaround stands in sharp contrast to where the club was in late June. On June 24 the Red Sox were 32-46, 14 games under .500 and the worst record in the American League. A June 24 loss to Colorado followed an earlier ninth-inning collapse against the Rockies in which Chapman allowed three runs without recording an out; Marcelo Mayer’s error had opened a separate fourth-inning outburst in the June 24 game, according to the report.
The narrative of change began with a delayed flight out of Colorado that forced the plane to return to Denver and pushed the club’s arrival in Boston to 5 a.m. Manager Chad Tracy, who replaced Alex Cora after Cora’s late-April firing, told the team to report an hour later for the June 25 game against the New York Yankees. Boston won that night 6-2 and then 6-1, 4-1 and 5-4 in 10 innings to sweep the four-game series and begin a 19-2 stretch. Later report times have since become a regular practice, though “are the later times why they started winning? No, of course not,” the report noted.
