Would it really? Or would it simply be a matter of a few stars aligning and maybe a tiny bit of fortune, something for which the Red Sox may be due.
While the odds are stacked rather high, Boston can still reach the promised land if the following five scenarios occur.
Be a Part of It, in Old New York
It’s not hard to imagine Boston making up one game on the Yankees by Sept. 24, is it? Given that not-so-far-fetched scenario, the Sox would enter a closing stretch that gives them six games against their chief rivals within no worse than six games in the loss column.
Sure, they may need to sweep all six head-to-head meetings, but at least the possibility remains that they could still control their own destiny more than three weeks from now. If those three weeks produce anything remarkable for Boston the possibility of a late comeback becomes even greater.
Pitch Like You Mean It
We keep hearing from Red Sox players and the coaching staff that they will be OK as long as their starting pitching performs the way it should. It’s a sane assessment and one that has been proven throughout baseball history.
But when your starting pitching fails to perform the way it should on a consistent basis, the old mantra means little. The rotation has produced 13 quality starts and 13 non-quality starts in its last 26 games. There have been some gems but far too many subpar performances. It’s hard to put together six, seven, eight wins in a row, the kind of streak the club will need to get back in this thing, when your starters give the other team a realistic chance to win 50 percent of the time.
Not in Our House
With its quirky dimensions and daily sellouts, Fenway Park is the one place perhaps in all of baseball where opposing teams can just crumble. There are 15 home games left on the schedule. Even for a banged-up bunch struggling to string together wins, picking up 11 or 12 wins in that span is not entirely out of the realm of possibility. Even the worst Red Sox teams have had such stretches in the friendly confines over the years.
Defend the turf, hope for some help elsewhere and you never know what might happen.
Take It Like a Man
It sounds a bit late in the game to hope for the Red Sox to avoid injuries, but one never knows if and when it becomes too much to handle. Perhaps it already has. Perhaps the likely loss of Dustin Pedroia for the season was the death knell.
But imagine if Adrian Beltre’s tight left hamstring becomes too much for him to bear and he has to be shut it down. What if Victor Martinez's various ailments send him to the shelf. You think this team is making a playoff push with Yamaico Navarro at third and Jarrod Saltalamacchia behind the plate? Not likely.
Those that remain from an injury-ravaged campaign must remain in the lineup.
Don’t Give Up, Don’t Ever Give Up
At the risk of getting too sappy and conjuring up mantras thrown out in college football locker rooms over the years, it’s important to keep some perspective here. Imagine if the Sox go 6-3 through the end of the next homestand, a perfectly possible result, and the Yankees go 5-4 in that same span. That would pull Boston within the aforementioned six-game margin and they would still have 12 games to go before the first of six with New York, plenty of time to perhaps nibble to within three or four.
Just sayin’. Don’t call it just yet.
