Every season has a couple of different high-water marks. The first is obvious and mathematical; and for the 2026 Red Sox, it came on September 7th after a win against the Angels. That victory pushed the team a season high 15 games over .500, and to an 80-65 record.
But a more indelible high-water mark came about five weeks earlier near the end of the team’s astounding 32-5 midsummer heater. Here, the Red Sox had just swept the Dodgers, moved to within five games of the division and American League
leading Rays, had the trade deadline to improve even more in the next 24 hours, and were surrounded by delightful rumors suggesting that both Roman Anthony and Garrett Crochet might return for a stretch run healthier than they actually did.
For me, this is somewhere around the moment where my “I think the Red Sox can win the World Series” meter peaked in my head. (The only other competition was after Opening Day before everything went haywire.)
It’s not just that the Sox swept the mighty Dodgers, it’s all the other tidbits surrounding it. The LA sweep came at the end of the second west coast road trip in a month, where they went a combined 15-1. Furthermore, they had now swept the Dodgers, Yankees, Rays and White Sox in the last five weeks, all of which were in first place when the sweeps started. This meant the Sox were now 13-0 since June 25th against a lineup of teams they were likely to see on their path to a championship.
Within these games, things were even crazier. Ceddanne Rafaela launched four home runs over the weekend in the Hollywood spotlight, and bumped his OPS over .800 as the calendar flipped to August.
If he could do this now, what might the Sox lineup look in a few weeks if they traded for Adley Rutschman (rumors were swirling), got Roman Anthony back, and got Willson Contreras healthier? Surely they wouldn’t be the worst offense in baseball in the month of September, right? ….. RIGHT?!?
Speaking of Contreras, he didn’t have a hit in this series against the Dodgers. Instead, he was hit in head early in Game 1, which caused him to leave and miss Game 2, and then when he returned for Game 3 before an off day (probably against everybody’s better judgement), he went 0-5 with two strikeouts despite the four guys surrounding him in the lineup reaching base a combined ten times. The point is that while Contreras was the team’s best hitter all year, they essentially put up 20 runs in three games against the Dodgers without him.
And while it was obvious they certainly didn’t run into the true teeth of the Dodger rotation for most of this series, they did beat Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the middle game, who despite going eight innings, only stuck out three Red Sox all night.
The winning pitchers in this Dodger series were Brayan Bello, Justin Slaten, and Jake Bennett, and five different players had at least one RBI in both the first and last game, which is all a great window into how everything the Sox touched was turning into gold at this stage of the season. The future was unknown, and ultimately, that’s what made the peak of the summer so magical.
We didn’t know Ceddanne Rafaela was going to cool off to the tune of a .520 OPS after August 17th. We didn’t know Adley Rutschman was going to post an OPS under .700 after joining the Sox the following day. We didn’t know the Roman Anthony we were about to get back was a guy who had only improved enough to play hurt down the stretch. We didn’t know Garrett Crochet wouldn’t pitch again in the regular season. And we didn’t know just how fleeting the magic of the summer would be once the team took its foot off the gas in late August.
Instead, in this moment, in a place made for dreams, a World Series run seemed as close as ever. Unfortunately, as the team prepared to go home and turned east towards the California desert in the direction of Fenway Park, those dreams turned out to be nothing more than a mirage.
