Given how the Boston Red Sox’s 2018 season ended, it’s easy to forget how the campaign got underway.
The Red Sox won a franchise-record 108 regular-season games before dropping just three playoff contests en route to a World Series title. But Boston didn’t exactly set the tone from the get-go last year, as it blew a four-run lead in the eighth inning in an eventual Opening Day loss to the Tampa Bay Rays.
Despite the nature of the defeat, the Red Sox couldn’t have been less fazed by kicking off the 2018 season in ugly fashion.
“We were all kind of like laughing about it,” Mitch Moreland told reporters Wednesday, per MassLive’s Chris Cotillo. “We knew how good we were gonna be.”
It’s safe to say Moreland and his teammates were right. Boston responded by winning 17 of its next 18 games and continued to rack up victories at a rapid rate through October.
The Red Sox open their 2019 campaign Thursday night in Seattle against the Mariners. While the reigning World Series champions surely won’t get caught up in one game win or lose, we imagine they’d rather not start the new season the same way they did last year.
But if the Sox are a superstitious bunch, who knows, maybe a horrific loss would be their preferred way to get things going.
