It’s probably safe to say it at this point: The Boston Red Sox are a very good baseball team.
The Sox entered the 2021 season with hopes of a rebound following a miserable pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign. After a seemingly disastrous opening three games against the lowly Baltimore Orioles, Boston has bounced back in a big way with Alex Cora back at the helm.
The Red Sox won 55 of 88 games following that season-opening sweep at the hands of the O’s and entered the All-Star break with a 55-36 record, good for a .604 winning percentage.
According to Stathead (with a hat tip to Bet MGM’s John Ewing), a sports research group part of Sports Reference (which runs Baseball-Reference.com), this is just the 15th time in Red Sox history they have had a winning percentage of .600 or better at the All-Star break. Boston most recently accomplished the feat in 2018 when it won a franchise-record 108 games before cruising to a World Series title.
It comes as no surprise, as Ewing points out, that the Red Sox have seen their 50-1 preseason World Series odds improve to 10-1.
Typically, that stellar first-half performance has preceded second-half success. In some cases, like 2018, it has led to postseason success. Boston also had won more than 60 percent of its games entering the break in 2007 and went on to win the World Series. Other examples include 1986 and 1946 when the Sox won the pennant.
The Red Sox have entered the break with such success eight times since MLB expanded its playoff field. They have made the playoffs in six of those seasons when they were above .600 at the break. The only two seasons they failed to reach the postseason was the late-season collapse of 2011 and 2002 when they won 93 games and finished a game and a half back in the wild-card race.
So a playoff spot is no guarantee, especially for a team that did show some cracks in its final two series before the break. The Sox also likely need to shore up their starting pitching, which they certainly could do if Chris Sale returns in something resembling his top form. They could also get a jolt from an infusion of young talent with the call-ups of Jarren Duran and Tanner Houck, who will be with the team whenever it begins its series with the Yankees this weekend.
