On June 25, the Boston Red Sox owned the worst record in the American League. Thirty-two wins, forty-six losses, a season circling the drain, and CBS Sports analysts were already filing them under “sellers” at the trade deadline. Eighteen games later, Boston sat at 48-48 — .500 for the first time in months — holding a playoff spot and riding an 11-game winning streak that no team in baseball had matched all season.
The franchise hadn’t put together a streak that long in a decade.
The run included a sweep of the Yankees and a July 17 doubleheader demolition of the Tampa Bay Rays, who entered the day leading the AL East. Game 1 was a 10-0 shutout. Rookie left-hander Jake Bennett needed just 65 pitches to get through six scoreless innings — Tampa Bay never advanced a runner into scoring position. Bennett has now delivered five straight quality starts dating to June 22, posting a 0.82 ERA and a 25-to-4 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 33 innings. Alec Gamboa, called up from Triple-A Worcester as the 27th man for the twin bill, covered the final three innings for his first career big-league save.
Game 2 was tighter but no less decisive. Wilyer Abreu hit two home runs — a two-run shot to tie it in the first, a solo blast to take the lead in the third — and Aroldis Chapman shut the door in the ninth with a 13-pitch save, his 20th of the year. Willson Contreras, fresh off a five-game suspension, cracked a solo homer in the first inning of the nightcap, his 21st of the season, tied for seventh-most in the American League. His .925 OPS ranks fourth in the AL.
The turnaround has been so abrupt that it scrambled the deadline conversation entirely. CBS Sports had a segment titled “AL Buyers and Sellers: Red Sox are Sellers” in the not-too-distant past. By the All-Star break, the headline had shifted to “Red Sox Sweep Yankees, But Are They Playoff Contenders?” The club carried a nine-game streak into the break, then picked up right where they left off — two more wins against the Rays, and the streak stood at 11, the longest by any MLB team in 2025.
Boston’s power ranking jumped 10 spots in a single week.
The numbers behind the run are as lopsided as you’d expect. Over the 18-game stretch from June 25 through July 17, the Red Sox went 16-2. Bennett’s emergence as a reliable rotation piece gave the staff a second arm capable of dominating, and the offense that looked dead through the first two-plus months suddenly produced up and down the lineup. Carlos Narvaez, a catcher hitting .188 with six RBI on the season, went 3-for-4 with a home run and three RBI in the Game 1 blowout. Masataka Yoshida, not an everyday starter but finding regular work at DH against right-handers, went 3-for-5 with a solo homer and is now hitting .448 over his last seven starts.
The Red Sox entered the All-Star break playing what one CBS analyst called “some wicked smart” baseball. They exited it playing the same way, only louder.
Whether a team that was 14 games under .500 three weeks ago can sustain this over 66 remaining games is the question every AL contender is now asking — because the team that looked like the league’s easiest opponent in late June suddenly looks like the one nobody wants to face.
- CBS Sports — Boston Red Sox team page (game recaps, player stats, video headlines)
- r/baseball — original post documenting the 32-46 to 48-48 turnaround and 11-game streak