BOSTON – For the Red Sox, the rut has been replaced by the rejuvenation.
With a healthy balance of starting pitching, timely/situational hitting, improved defense and youthful energy, manager Alex Cora’s team is back at .500 (36-36) for the first time since May 24.
In Saturday night’s 4-3 victory over the Yankees at Fenway Park, the Sox demonstrated all of those attributes while defeating their rivals for the fourth consecutive time over the past two weekends.
To get back to even, Boston has reeled off a 7-2 stretch and will take a four-game winning streak into Sunday’s rivalry series finale. The Sox have won their past three series and three of their past four.
“It's a step in the right direction,” said veteran shortstop Trevor Story. “We kind of dug ourselves a little hole early on. This is a point that we have to get to to get to where we want to be. So yeah, we feel good right now, looking to ride this momentum and keep pitching well and keeping hitting well, and we can win a lot of games that way.”
Rookie Hunter Dobbins, who made waves last weekend when he said he’d retire before pitching for the Yankees, fired six scoreless innings while allowing two hits and one walk and striking out five. It was his second victory over New York in a week.
“I think what makes this one more satisfying is that we won the series and we're building momentum,” Dobbins said. “We're crawling back into this race where there's a lot of season left. We're building momentum for the rest of the year. And that's what's more satisfying to me.”
Offensively, it was a methodical performance as the Red Sox won by scoring once in four separate innings.
While doing the little things has been lacking at times, particularly in the club’s 9-17 record in one-run games, it was there for all to see on Saturday.
When lefty killer Romy Gonzalez perfectly placed a double to the gap in right-center in the fifth, Kristian Campbell roared all the way around from first to score – his helmet flying off after he rounded third.
After Story led off the seventh with a double high off the Green Monster in left, Ceddanne Rafaela bunted him to third and Marcelo Mayer drove him in with a sacrifice fly to left.
“You can create momentum that way, too,” said Story. “It’s not all about big swings or the big innings. It's little things like that that end up winning the game. Playing clean defense. We've cleaned that up a little bit. And I think, to be in the end with a really good team, we have to do those things well.”
To Story’s point about the defense, Mayer made two standout plays at third base in the sixth – one against Aaron Judge and the other against Ben Rice – to make the final frame for Dobbins an uneventful one.
“Trust the guys behind you,” said Dobbins. “I trust every single one of those fielders behind me to make great plays. When you have faith in your guys like that, you can slow the game down and stay within yourself.”
In the seventh, as the Yankees were trying to mount a comeback, Jasson Domínguez thought Trent Grisham had struck out for the final out and was caught napping between second and third. Carlos Narváez threw a bullet to second, and Domínguez was caught in a rundown to end the inning.
The Sox will take the field as a .500 team for the Father’s Day matinee against Yankees ace Max Fried. They hope that it leads to a happy flight for a three-city West Coast trip that will take them to Seattle, San Francisco and Anaheim.
“Our goal was to get back to .500, and it really doesn't matter against who,” said Cora. “There's a lot of ways to make it to October, and now we're back to point zero. We’re neutral. So we’ve just got to keep playing well. We played well in New York, and we played well against Tampa Bay. These two games were pretty solid.”
Things feel differently around the Red Sox right now than after a 3-2 loss in Milwaukee on Memorial Day when outfielder Rob Refnsyder said, “We suck right now.”
“I’d be lying to say it doesn't feel daunting when you're a [few] games under .500,” said Refsnyder. “To get to the postseason, get where we want to be, we’ve got to be over 500.”