The Boston Red Sox are 80-65 with a magic number of 10. The Blue Jays are 72-73, eight back. The Guardians are right there too, fighting the Blue Jays for the right to chase Boston. Seventeen games remain. The Red Sox recently swept Baltimore in four games to get here—outscoring the Orioles 15-6 over a four-game stretch that felt like a statement after rough series in the Bronx and then home against the Mariners.
The math is friendly. The schedule, at least for the next ten days, is also friendly. After
that, things get interesting.
Let’s take this series by series.
vs. Angels (Sep 7-9, Fenway) — 2 games
Los Angeles is 54-89. They’re playing out the string. This is the kind of series a playoff-contending team wins at least two of—ideally all three—without breaking a sweat, and with Fenway in full September mode, there’s no excuse not to come out of this week with at least a 2-1. The magic number realistically drops to 8 or 9 by Wednesday night if the Sox take care of business and get even a little help elsewhere. Consider this the grace period. The only X factor here is maybe the team is hyped up now that they finally get a real owner in Stan Kroenke and are out from under the thumb of Art Moreno? Nothing on the field excites me otherwise.
vs. Royals (Sep 11-13, Fenway) — 3 games
Kansas City is 63-80 in the standings but has been playing better baseball lately than that record suggests. They won’t roll over. A nine-game win streak in mid-August says this team can still be pesky. That said, this is still a home series at Fenway Park in the middle of September against a team that is firmly out of playoff contention, and the Red Sox rotation should line up beautifully here. Gray, Suarez, Tolle, some combination of 2 of 3 pitching at Fenway against a .441 team is about as favorable a setup as you can draw. Take two, feel good about the third.
By the end of the Royals series (September 13), a reasonable projection has the Sox somewhere around 6-2 through those six games—magic number sitting in the 6-7 range, depending on what the Blue Jays and Guardians do.
That’s where the nerves kick in.
@ Rangers (Sep 15-17, Globe Life Field) — 3 games
This is the first real test. Texas is 70-73, only two games behind the Blue Jays and Guardians in the Wild Card race, and they are very much still playing for that third Wild Card spot. Globe Life Field is a hitter’s park and the Rangers will treat this series like a playoff game. Expect a fight. A 1-2 outcome here would not be surprising. Going up against possibly Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi is not a fun prospect when things are on the line. This is where the road trip gets real.
@ Rays (Sep 18-20, Tropicana Field) — 3 games
The Rays are 85-57, the best record in the American League East, and they’re locked in heading into the postseason. This is the hardest series on the remaining schedule. Full stop. Tropicana Field is a weird place to play—the lighting, the turf, the, well the stadium just sucks—and Tampa will find a way to be a pain in the rear end as they always are. A 1-2 series would be a fine result. A sweep of this series would genuinely be a statement win for October seeding. Going 0-3 would hurt, but even then, the math works out fine as long as the teams chasing Boston aren’t running hot at the same time.
After the road trip (Rangers + Rays, six games), the realistic range is somewhere between 2-4 and 4-2. Even the pessimistic version of that road trip doesn’t change the math much if the Sox played well against the Angels and Royals.
vs. Guardians (Sep 22-24, Fenway) — 3 games
Here’s where this gets fun, or scary, depending on how you’re wired.
Cleveland is 72-71 and directly chasing a Wild Card spot. If the magic number isn’t already at zero by September 22—which is entirely possible—this three-game series at Fenway becomes a de facto playoff series. The Guardians will know exactly what they need. The Red Sox will know exactly what they’re protecting. Fenway in late September for a Wild Card race. That’s the best-case scenario for the atmosphere and the worst-case scenario for anyone who watches these games through their fingers.
Take two here. That’s the ask. And given Fenway’s crowd in September, given this rotation, given the momentum this team has been building since the break, two wins against Cleveland at home is entirely reasonable.
vs. Cubs (Sep 25-27, Fenway) — 3 games
Chicago closes out the regular season. The Cubs are 81-62, fighting for NL Wild Card positioning, so they won’t be mailing anything in. The boos against Alex Bregman are going to be delicious given the rise of Caleb Durbin. But they’re not chasing the Red Sox’s spot, and by this point in September, if everything has gone reasonably well, this is either the celebration series or the final push over the line. Either way, it’s baseball at Fenway in the last week of September. There are worse things.
The realistic projection
Walk through it: 2-1 against the Angels. 2-1 against the Royals. 1-2 on the Rangers road trip. 1-2 against the Rays. 2-1 against the Guardians. 2-1 to close against the Cubs. That’s 10-8 the rest of the way. Ninety wins on the season. Eight games ahead of the Blue Jays going in, and even if Toronto and Cleveland play well, 10 Red Sox wins means they clinch a spot no matter what the teams behind them do.
It isn’t going to feel easy. September never does. The road trip against Texas and Tampa is gonna be rough, the Guardians series could be a heart attack, and this offense has shown it can go quiet at the wrong times. But the structure of this schedule—tough opponents bookended by genuinely favorable matchups at Fenway—is about as good a draw as a team in the Sox’s position could hope for.
Chad Tracy’s managing is also something to mention here. Getting depth back for the Sox at the exact right time is going to help this Red Sox team rest core players on the roster. Let Willson Contreras and Ceddanne Rafaela rest up on the IL for a hair. Mickey Gasper and Eli White can power this charge. Garrett Whitlock not used a ton in Baltimore? Cool, let the front end of the bullpen take the reins…as long as it doesn’t get too dicey. It also looks like we somehow may welcome back Tanner Houck into this mix.
Still, the rotation of depth pieces is going to freak a lot of people out and make it a little less predictable to see how this plays out.
Magic number 10. Seventeen games. The door is right there. Go get it, fellas.
