This past week for the Boston Red Sox ended a whole lot better than it started, to say the least.
The Red Sox’s struggles mounted over a two-game sweep at the hands of the New York Yankees, but Boston responded by taking all three games in its weekend series with the Tampa Bay Rays, who entered the set with a 14-5 record.
But despite their showing against a red-hot division rival, the Red Sox still suffered a dip in ESPN’s Major League Baseball power rankings. After coming in at No. 12 last week, the reigning World Series champs find themselves at No. 15 in the latest edition published Monday.
“So the defending champs aren’t dead yet,” Steve Richards writes. “After a three-game sweep of the Rays, the Red Sox are at Fenway for a 10-game homestand that includes three more against Tampa Bay. The surprising hero this weekend? Catcher Christian Vazquez, who hit a two-run homer Friday, picked Tommy Pham off first to end Saturday’s win and knocked in the winning run Sunday with an 11th-inning sac fly.”
The Red Sox’s position in the power rankings isn’t off-base conceptually, as every club that precedes them currently owns a record of .500 or better. But dropping Boston three spots after it swept the current top team in the American League seems odd. Then again, its previous rankings might have been based off potential, and now with three-plus weeks of the season in the books, ESPN really might just view the Sox as an average ball club.
Either way, Boston will have an opportunity to improve its billing over the course of a 10-game homestand which kicks off Monday night with the first of a four-game set against the Detroit Tigers.
