1. 14 wins in a row is a lot.

That's probably obvious, but it must be said. The Boston Red Sox just became the 52nd team all-time and sixth team in the past 10 seasons to rattle off a 14-game winning streak.

2. 15 would inch into historic territory.

For one thing, it would tie the franchise record, matching the 1946 team that won the pennant.

Only two teams overall in the past decade have ripped off longer streaks, and that’s where things start to get fun. The 2021 Cardinals won 17 in a row in September to blaze their way into the playoffs. And Cleveland won 22 in a row in 2017, the sport’s all-time high-water mark.

3. Streaks like this tend to mint contenders.

The last team to win 14 in a row and miss the playoffs was the 1999 Padres.

The last team to win 15 in a row and miss the playoffs? The 1936 Cubs.

4. The Red Sox have squared their season.

More seriously: At their nadir on June 21, the Red Sox saw their FanGraphs postseason odds sink to 8.4%. Now, those odds are up to 63.7%. Not only have they basically put a little exponential two behind those odds and re-run the numbers, they improved on their preseason odds this weekend for the first time since they beat the Reds on Opening Day.

For all intents and purposes, the Red Sox are what we thought they were: A contender in the AL East pack with better than a coin flip’s shot at October. It was just a long, hard road to get there.

5. Is this the most satisfying arc possible?

I think it might be the most satisfying season arc. Certainly, my wife's experience of the 2024 'OMG' Mets would be a point in favor of that assertion. The 2022 Phillies, the 2021 Braves ... recent evidence suggests roller coasters are fun. This ride is not nearly over yet, of course, but this is a shape that generates joy by dredging it out of the muck.

It’s a knowing, mirthful smirk, Joker’s lips. It’s riding your bike down a scary hill and powering up the next one on the adrenaline of having survived. It’s your thirty-second and final idea working to perfection.

6. Caleb Durbin has turned it around.

A winter addition who got off to a grisly start — while his former team, the Brewers, coaxed excellence out of trade return Kyle Harrison — Durbin’s personal arc has been a long slog straight up.

He batted .172 in April, was somehow worse in May with a 41 wRC+ (100 is average, yikes), and then the 5-foot-6 third baseman kicked into gear. His time with the Red Sox reached a new peak Monday night when he popped the go-ahead homer that finally sealed win No. 14.

Down to the Orioles, winners of seven in a row entering the game, on three separate occasions, the Red Sox kept climbing back. Durbin’s blast into the night, and eventually into the Green Monster seats, unleashed October levels of frenzy.

“I blacked out,” Durbin told reporters after the game. “I think that was one of the moments where I just didn’t know what was happening.”

7. Not knowing what's happening is reasonable.

The Red Sox are doing this without Garrett Crochet, Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Trevor Story and others. Starter Ranger Suarez, an otherwise steady presence, even missed these last two revelatory weeks with a groin injury. He returns to start tonight.

In their place, a whole bunch of rather anonymous players have helped in their own ways. Throughout this recent rise, the switch-hitting, 27-year-old rookie second baseman Anthony Seigler has been batting leadoff and just generally making things happen. Though he’s already sinking back toward reasonable projections, Seigler batted .350 in June when the Red Sox desperately needed a spark. These are the sorts of contributions that make “replacement players” crucial to the story of a long season.

8. This has been a great pitching team all year.

Since June 1, the Red Sox have a 3.16 ERA, and the second-best park-adjusted team ERA-, a smidge behind the Tigers. Here’s the twist: Second is actually a downgrade from their full-season ERA-, which ranks first in the big leagues.

Sonny Gray is the leader of the band. The diminutive 36-year-old right-hander who was a Cy Young finalist in 2015 and 2023 is making another run. He’s 12-1 with a 2.48 ERA, fourth-best among qualified starters. Plus, he despises the Yankees.

9. They have so many lefties.

Beyond Gray, here’s a safe bet about the other members of the Red Sox rotation: They’re left-handed.

In a season where more and more hitters are left-handed, the Red Sox are the ultimate counter-punch. Payton Tolle and Jake Bennett, in particular, have stepped up with great innings as rookies. Connelly Early is hurt right now, but continues to look promising after a strong 2025 debut.

Southpaws have chucked 498 2/3 frames for the Red Sox, including 73 starts. That’s 127 2/3 innings more than the Phillies, who have gotten the second-most work from lefties, a gap wider than the one from second to 18th.

For the record: The most starts for one team by left-handers is 127 by the 1983 Yankees. The most innings by left-handers is 963 by the World Series-winning 1965 Dodgers.

10. Willson Contreras is a star.

Playing through the tumult of his native Venezuela’s struggle following devastating earthquakes, Contreras has let everyone see the worry and the fight and the catharsis. It’s hard to even fathom that 2026 is his first year in Boston. The team seems to revolve around the veteran first baseman, who is raking. His 157 wRC+ is a top five mark among qualified hitters.

Plus, as the great Boston Globe scribe Alex Speier pointed out, Contreras’ latest home run was an odds-busting sight to behold: A right-handed hitter going deep in right-center near the Fenway triangle.

via Baseball Savant

11. Remember Alex Cora?

It wasn’t that long ago that World Series-winning skipper Alex Cora and the bulk of his coaching staff were escorted away in the memorably named Coaches4Hire bus.

Do we have to count that as a masterstroke by Craig Breslow and the Red Sox ownership group? Not necessarily.

It’s true that the 2022 Phillies and the 2026 Phillies and a few other clubs that aren't the Phillies have conspicuously hit their stride after managerial changes, but it’s not a neat and tidy line. FanGraphs’ Dan Szymborski did the research, with the help of his ZiPS projection system, on managerial firings going back to 2004. Gauging the teams’ strength from the firing forward to their actual results, Szymborski found that the new managers deviated from their projections by less than two wins across 3,061 games managed.

12. Nevertheless, Chad Tracy is in charge now.

The former D-backs third baseman, promoted from a minor-league managerial post to manage a lot of players he recently saw during their development, has offered a steady hand.

“I wish I was like him,” Contreras told beat writer Ian Browne. "If we win or lose, he’s at the same level. That’s hard to do, especially with baseball. But he’s been good to us – good with the communication with the younger guys and the veterans. Everybody seems to be cool with him. And we like him here.”

Browne draws a parallel with the 1988 Red Sox, who made a managerial change and immediately surged, winning 19 out of 20 under Joe Morgan (not that one).

13. But also, Craig Breslow is in charge.

For the embattled chief baseball officer, the best thing about the winning streak might be that everyone stopped talking about him.

That reprieve is about to end, though.

Boston’s season changing on a dime means Breslow is already being asked to declare his intentions ahead of the Aug. 3 trade deadline — which he has declined to do in the sort of level, a-bit-too-corporate-PR-ified language that has been irritating Red Sox fans in the leaner times.

If they remain in postseason position — right now, they’re the third wild card, 1.5 games up, and only a game back of the second wild card — it’s hard to see any choice but to buy and buy assertively.

14. This odyssey lore has potential.

In a month where noted Red Sox fan Matt Damon is thriving with an Odyssey, his favorite team is also crediting some success to the drama and turmoil of travel difficulties.

Boston suffered through serious (modern) travel delays a couple times recently, most memorably when multiple issues with their charter plane turned an easy plane ride from Chicago to New York into a 22-hour sojourn. A day after a day game, they only arrived at 5 p.m. to play the Mets at 7 p.m. The mess created all sorts of issues.

If you haven’t listened to an interview with Payton Tolle, the massive left-handed starter who evokes an 80s bullpen guy, correct that now.

But it also built some bonds. Reliever Justin Slaten told the Boston Globe that the travel nightmare “gave us this [expletive] attitude that whatever happens, happens.”

“This might seem like a weird way to say it, but the different challenges gave us a new life. It’s like a snake shedding its skin,” he said. “We wiped out all the bad stuff that happened. It was pretty much the same people, and yet it was a completely new team.” ⚾️

This has been a breaking news Bandwagon. I'll be back with bits and bobs and more later in the week.