Before we begin looking ahead to 2027, OTM is looking back at 2026, highlighting some of the biggest, strangest, and most memorable moments of a memorable season. Today, we look at one of the most improbable, incredible months in baseball history.
On the final day of August, the hottest hitter in all of Major League Baseball, Mickey Gasper, returned to the Red Sox lineup after a brief, and unnecessary, detour. Upon his return, he did what he had been doing the entire month. He homered, immediately,
in the bottom of the first inning to tie the game against the Mariners at 1-1. It was Gasper’s sixth home run of August, a month which he didn’t even play a game at the MLB level until the 17th. For a player who had two home runs in 92 career games entering that month.
In his next at bat, NESN flashed arguably the single craziest stat that they had ever posted on our television screens.
Now, was there a little bit of small sample bias here? Certainly. Was Barry Bonds also the first player in history to balloon to a Size 9 hat during April of 2004? Almost certainly. You can take everything on there with a grain of salt. Gasper had 38 plate appearances in August at that moment. Ted Williams had 33 plate appearances in September of 1957. Of course, Williams also reached base in 16 consecutive plate appearances during that time; a Modern Era record that still stands today. By the way, Williams hit .453 in the second half that year.
What made this graphic all the more improbable was that Gasper had been demoted to Triple-A the day before. It was prior to the final game of the disastrous four game set at the Yankees, with Roman Anthony and Trevor Story returning from the IL at the same time. It was bad karma, and the Red Sox got what they deserved that day, losing 16-1. It wasn’t the only bad karma that week, with paying customers getting the Jedixson Paez Game just a couple of days later.
Gasper spent the day at home in New Jersey, as he wouldn’t need to report to Worcester until the next day. As he explained:
“I spent about 15 hours hanging out with my dogs and my pets, just hanging out at the house. Mom made a nice dinner,” Gasper said. “I was just relaxing, getting my mind right, just preparing for what was ahead of me. I watched the whole game, so I did see Willson come out [early]. But I was eating dinner and then I saw I had three missed calls from [chief baseball officer Craig Breslow], so I figured something was up. I gave him a call right back and got on a flight this morning.”
But, back to that 1.827 OPS. Gasper was recalled on the 17th thanks to an incredible Triple-A slash line of .337/.450/.566 with a 165 wRC+. As I wrote, for whatever reason, in a Minor Lines just three days earlier, “The guy shows up for work every day and will be ready for the call when needed. I expect to see him hitting .300 somewhere at the age of 40.”
In his first three games, against the Diamondbacks, Gasper started as the designated hitter and he homered in all three of them. The most memorable being the third one, a three-run homer to tie the game at 5-5.
In another surprise, Gasper’s career-long ‘stache was morphing into a goatee, which he described as a very Eck-like “chin spinach.”
A week later, at Miami, Gasper mixed in a two homer game, the only two runs that the Red Sox scored until extra innings, where they went on to win 7-3. At this point, Gasper was catching on nationally, as he was having one of the greatest eight game stretches of all-time.
Gasper walked ten times in the month, and struck out just twice. His final hit of the month was the early home run against Seattle, as he went 1-for-4 with a walk that day, and the final month long OPS was a measly 1.671, down from the graphic’s 1.827. The full slash line over 12 games: .400/.571/1.100.
He homered on his first at bat of September as well, one of four homers that month, finishing with ten on the season before a severe biceps injury ended Gasper’s year just before the playoffs. Offseason surgery will have him out 4-6 months, but the 31-year-old deserves a chance to start the season with the big league squad, at catcher, infield, or otherwise, to prove that the third greatest OPS of all-time “modern day Ted Williams” was no fluke.
