The Boston Red Sox are eight games into a winning streak, and the eighth one nearly got away from them four separate ways. Caleb Durbin lined a single to center off Erick Fedde in the 13th inning Thursday night to score Nick Sogard, and Boston survived the Chicago White Sox 12 to 11 in a game that ran past four hours. Twenty-three combined runs. Thirteen innings. One base hit that finally stuck.
That is how a Red Sox winning streak stops being a hot week and starts being a character trait.
How the Red Sox beat the White Sox in 13 innings
The headline verb is the right one: rallied. Again and again. Boston did not lead this game comfortably and then hold it, which is the version of 12 to 11 that lets everybody go home at a reasonable hour. They kept getting answered, and they kept answering back, all the way into a 13th inning that neither pitching staff had any business reaching in one piece.
I do not have the full inning-by-inning in front of me yet, and I am not going to paint runs into innings I did not see scored. What I can tell you is what the ending says about the middle. When Erick Fedde is the man Chicago has standing on the mound in the 13th, both dugouts have already emptied every drawer they own. That is not a criticism of anybody. That is August, on a Thursday, with a game that refuses to end.
And Durbin's swing was not a moonshot. It was a line drive to center field with a runner on and no margin left. Sogard scored. Streak lives.
What the eight-game Red Sox winning streak actually means
Boston sits 63 and 51, third in the American League East, which is the sentence that makes this run interesting rather than cute. Third place in that division in early August is not a resting place, it is a waiting room. Eight straight is how you get out of the waiting room.
Here is the shape of Boston's neighborhood as it stood coming into Friday:
| Team | Record | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Boston Red Sox | 63-51 | 3rd, AL East |
| New York Yankees | 64-51 | 2nd, AL East |
| Houston Astros | 59-57 | 1st, AL West |
One game separates Boston from the Yankees. That is the whole story of this streak in a single row of a table. Eight wins in a row and they are still looking up, which tells you exactly how hard that division has been playing.
from the almanac: the last time a red sox extra-inning single became folklore, it was david ortiz punching one to center in the 14th to win game 5 of the 2004 alcs. durbin's wasn't that. nothing is that. but the mechanics were identical: nobody left to pitch, one runner who mattered, ball on the grass.
What comes next for Boston and Chicago
Boston stays home and hosts the Athletics tonight at 7:11 ET, and Oakland arrives at 45 and 70, fourth in the AL West, trying to stop a road skid. On paper that is the softest possible landing after a 13-inning knife fight. In practice, a bullpen that just worked into the 13th does not care what the visitor's record is, and the ninth win of a streak is always the one that asks the most awkward question: who is actually available.
Chicago goes home too, hosting the Guardians at 7:41 ET. The White Sox scored 11 runs on the road and lost, which is the single most demoralizing box score line in baseball. They led this game. They answered when Boston answered. They ran out of arms before they ran out of fight. There is no moral victory in there, but there is something real: a lineup that put 11 on the board against a team playing its best baseball of the year.
What I am watching next is Boston's pitching usage over the weekend. Eight in a row is a beautiful thing to read about and a brutal thing to staff. Streaks in August do not usually die to a better team. They die to a tired one.
