The Boston Red Sox have gone from a season low of 32-46 to one of the hottest stretches in baseball, winning 27 of 30 games before dropping two to the Oakland Athletics and a 2-1 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays that extended a brief skid to three games. Boston had not lost consecutive games in five weeks before the Oakland series.
Bill James’ team-temperature concept was used to measure the run. The source’s author, who tracked those temperatures in his system, reported Boston reached an apex of 130 degrees — the highest temperature recorded by any team this season. After the two losses to Oakland the Red Sox still remained above 100 degrees for a 28th straight day, the most days over 100 of any team this year; the defeat to Toronto lowered the mark to 92 degrees.
The surge is especially striking because it followed a prolonged slump. The Red Sox’s season nadir came just before the run, when they were 14 games under .500 at 32-46. At that low point, after a 4-3 loss to Toronto on June 18 that completed a three-game sweep at Fenway, the team temperature was 42 degrees.
Across the season the club has spent substantially more time in the cool category than the warm one: 71 days below 72 degrees versus 47 days at 72 degrees or warmer. Boston has been at or below that 72-degree threshold 60 percent of the time, the eighth-highest share in the majors.
The 27-3 run places Boston in rare company. According to ESPN Research, the Red Sox became just the seventh team in the past 100 years to go 27-3 over a 30-game stretch. The source notes that the first six teams combined for 11 maximum games under .500 during their seasons, while the Red Sox reached 14 games under by themselves this year.
General manager Craig Breslow had signaled plans to move expendable contracts around the trade deadline as the team was beginning to stir, a backdrop to the turnaround documented in the temperature tracking and the win streak.
