A month ago, that sentence would’ve looked like a joke.
To say the Red Sox stumbled out of the gate this season is a generous understatement. The offense — the one thing about this team that fans were a bit concerned about coming out of spring training — was just fine, but the pitching couldn’t string together wins. Daisuke Matsuzaka wasn’t ready by the time the season began, Josh Beckett was struggling and possibly injured, Jon Lester’s notorious April issues were rearing their ugly head and John Lackey was falling a bit short of impossible expectations. A team that finished spring training with a starting staff that, on paper, could have been the best in baseball was broken, and nobody knew why.
The lowest point came roughly one month ago.
On Monday, May 17, the 19-19 Red Sox played Game 1 of a two-game set against New York at Yankee Stadium. By the top of the second inning, barely anyone in Boston was still watching. Matsuzaka, making his fourth start of the season, allowed five runs in the bottom of the first — and with Boston already in a 7 1/2-game hole in the AL East and already having lost three of its last four games, extending that deficit to 8 1/2 games during its first visit of the year to Yankee Stadium was heartbreaking enough.
But the team battled. It fought back to within two runs in the fifth inning, then took a 9-7 lead in the top of the eighth on back-to-back homers by Kevin Youkilis and Victor Martinez. They had done it, showing a bit of character that seemed to have been conspicuously missing during the first month-plus of the season.
And then, in the bottom of the ninth, Jonathan Papelbon imploded and allowed two home runs — one to Alex Rodriguez and one to Marcus Thames — to allow the Yankees to walk off with a win.
The heartbreak intensified.
The Red Sox were fading fast in the AL East, their pitching was a mess, they couldn’t win even when their offense exploded, and people all over New England began wondering whom Theo Epstein would unload at the 2010 trade deadline, since the Sox would clearly be way too far out of first place to make a run at the postseason.
And then, the very next night, the turning point came.
This time, it was Beckett on the mound, and this time, it wasn’t until the bottom of the fifth that things looked hopeless for Boston. Though the Red Sox were only down 3-0, they were facing CC Sabathia, which was bad enough. But the deficit increased to 5-0 when Beckett was pulled after 4 2/3 innings upon allowing a two-run double to Robinson Cano, and after that, a quick sweep at the hands of the pinstripes appeared to be imminent.
So did a 9 1/2-game deficit in the AL East.
Then, as they’ve done so many times before, the Red Sox did "it" again. They were down 5-1 in the top of the eighth, and a shaky Joba Chamberlain allowed a double, a two-run single and another single to allow the Red Sox to tie it. In the top of the ninth, after Marco Scutaro reached on an error for the second straight inning, Jeremy Hermida doubled to deep left-center field, scoring both Scutaro and Darnell McDonald.
The Red Sox won 7-5. They were not dead. They were far from it.
Since then — since May 18, 2010 — the Red Sox have gone 23-8. That day, they improved to .500 and haven’t dipped below that mark since. They have become the AL’s best team in hits, runs, slugging percentage and OPS. They are the second-best team in home runs, batting average and on-base percentage.
Then there’s that pitching staff.
After Sunday’s 2-0 win over the Dodgers, Clay Buchholz became one of five 10-game winners in Major League Baseball. Prior to Sunday’s win, Boston’s starting rotation led the majors with a .667 winning percentage. Buchholz, Lester and Lackey are the only trio of eight-game winners in MLB.
Every season, there’s always that moment.
In 2004, it was on July 24, when Bill Mueller’s walk-off home run against the Yankees initiated Boston’s torrid tear through the rest of the regular season.
In 2010, it was on a Tuesday night in May when everyone in Boston had already given up on the Red Sox and had focused their attention on the Celtics, who were about to take a 2-0 Eastern Conference semifinals lead against the Magic.
While you were watching the Celtics that night, the Red Sox got good again.
