Red-hot Red Sox Right Back In It

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In its original form as a Yankees newsletter before this season’s expansion with Day at the Ballpark, I would wager that most of you signed up because you’re a Yankees fan, and that of course probably means that like me, you’re a Red Sox hater.

So I would imagine that, like me, you were enjoying this baseball season much more when the arch rivals from Boston were one of the worst teams in MLB, sitting dead last not only in the AL East on the morning of June 25, but in the entire AL. The Red Sox were 32-46, a massive 15.5 games behind the first-place Yankees in the division and were six games out of the wild-card race.

Glorious times indeed.

As we wake up today, July 12, the Red Sox are the hottest team in MLB as they won their eighth straight game Saturday night, 4-0 over the God-awful Mets. All eight wins have come on a road trip where they swept the Angels and White Sox.

Having won 13 of their last 15 they are now 45-48 and have jumped up to third in the division though they’re still 11 behind the new frontrunner, the Rays, and seven behind the Yankees. More importantly, they are just a half-game behind Minnesota and Seattle for that final wild card spot.

So yeah, it’s the opposite of glorious times if you loathe the Red Sox the way I have for, oh, about 50 years.

“If you look back to two weeks ago, job No. 1 - or the most important thing - was that we had to have a good stretch here and get ourselves back to where everybody looks and says, ‘Hey, the Red Sox are kinda back in this thing,’” said interim manager Chad Tracy, who took over for the fired Alex Cora on April 26. “There’s a lot of season left and there’s a lot of work to be done, but we’ve done an excellent job to get ourselves to where we are right now.”

And of course, what’s so galling about this is that the Red Sox have the Yankees to thank for this resurgence. At their lowest point on June 25, one day removed from an awful loss at Colorado and three days removed from an even worse loss at Colorado, the Red Sox came back to Fenway Park - where they’ve played terribly all season -to host the Yankees for a four-game series.

That neatly coincided with a time when the Yankees were just entering the on ramp to the highway to hell, otherwise known as their annual summer swoon. Boston won all four games during which the red-hot Rays had just started a nine-game winning streak and leapfrogged the Yankees by the end of that miserable weekend.

That horrible performance across those four games by the Yankees undeniably turned Boston’s season around. Had the Yankees even managed a split, I’m probably not spending all these words this morning on the resplendent Red Sox.

If they finish off a sweep of the Mets Sunday, it will be the first time since 1977 that the Red Sox went at least 9-0 on a single road trip.

“It feels good, obviously,” said Tracy, who may parlay this into getting the interim tag removed. “[Earlier on], we were struggling to score and didn't feel like things were going right. And now we're enjoying a stretch here. We're doing a lot of things right. We're throwing the ball great, we're getting clutch hits, we're scoring runs early, we're stretching pitch counts on starters. We're doing a fantastic job. So we just got to keep playing good baseball.”

Shaking my head in disgust.

⚾ RF Esmerlyn Valdez, Pirates: After five-plus years in the minors, the 22-year-old was called up for his MLB debut May 22 and it didn’t seem like he’d be sticking around too long. He hit .083 (2-for-24) in his first nine games, but since then, wow. Saturday in Pittsburgh’s doubleheader sweep over Milwaukee, Valdez went 3-for-4 with two homers and six RBI in a 7-6 Game 1 victory, then hit a two-run homer to start the Pirates on their way to a 3-2 win in the nightcap. In his last 18 games he’s slashing an incredible .394/.446/.864 with a 1.310 OPS.

⚾ SP Freddy Peralta, Mets: In a travesty of a season so far for the Mets, Peralta has certainly been one of the reasons. Signed as a free agent in the offseason to be a top-end rotation pitcher, Peralta has given the Mets next to nothing. His latest poor effort came in the Mets 4-0 loss to the Red Sox as he lasted just 4.1 innings and gave up two runs on three hits and five walks. His ERA is now 4.66 and his WHIP is 1.444. He has pitched at least six innings in just six of his 20 starts. In eight years with the Brewers he had a 3.59 ERA and 1.132 WHIP.

⚾ SP Kyle Bradish, Orioles: He had a no-hitter thru six innings against the Royals before running into trouble in the seventh, but by then the Orioles were in control in what became a 6-1 victory, their third in a row. Bradish had struggled a bit with a 4.33 ERA since the start of June but he baffled the light-hitting Royals. “I didn't really even notice until we went out for the seventh,” Bradish said of his no-hit bid which was ended by Jac Caglianone. “When I ran out there, it was kind of a loud cheer, and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ But then, it crept in my mind. I mean, it was a weak hit, but whatever.”

⚾ SP Trey Yesavage, Blue Jays: He was all over the place as he walked seven men in just 1.2 innings which led to four runs in the first two innings of Toronto’s 8-7 loss to the Padres. Yesavage missed the first month with a shoulder ailment and this was his 14th start. At times he has looked like the star the Jays believe he will be including six dominant shutout innings against the Yankees on May 20, but the Yankees got him for five earned runs on June 12, a night when he walked six. He’s now had four games this year where he walked at least five.

⚾ DH Yordan Alvarez, Astros: He hit his 31st homer in a 9-3 rout of the Rangers, continuing a season that should end up in his first AL MVP award with Aaron Judge out of the mix. Alvarez leads the AL in homers and RBI (70) and he leads MLB in on-base (.422), slugging (.633), OPS (1.055) and total bases (219). Friday in his 771st career game Alvarez hit his 200th homer and became the eighth-fastest to reach that plateau. He also became the second-fastest Astro to reach 30 in a season (96 games, behind only Jeff Bagwell who did it in 91 games in 1999).

🔼 Phillies (53-43): The remarkable turnaround under Don Mattingly continues as they beat the Tigers 4-2 despite a weird start by Christopher Sanchez. He battled more traffic than I-95 in the summer as he allowed 10 hits and a walk, but only two Tigers scored. Philly is now 44-24 since Mattingly replaced Rob Thomson and they have pulled within two games of the faltering Braves in the NL East as they get set to host the All-Star festivities with Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber both participating in the Home Run Derby.

🔼 Rays (56-37): As if acknowledging the Red Sox above wasn’t tough enough, it must be done for another team I despise because Tampa Bay beat the Mariners 6-1 and have won 13 of its last 16 to take firm control in the AL East. Ben Williamson went 4-for-4 but it was pinch-hitter Ryan Vilade who did the big damage with a three-run homer off Logan Gilbert that turned a tight 2-1 game into a 5-1 runaway. What was brutal is Gilbert pitched great and retired the first two men in the seventh, but he was ordered to intentionally walk Junior Caminero right before the Vilade homer.

🔼 Diamondbacks (48-47): They moved into second place in the NL West, albeit 12.5 games behind the Dodgers, by blowing out Los Angeles for the second night in a row 9-2 on the heels of a 9-3 victory on Friday. This one was impressive because they jumped on Yoshinobu Yamamoto for six earned runs in six innings, five of those coming in the sixth inning when James McCann hit a three-run homer. McCann later hit a two-run shot, going back-to-back in the eighth with Nolan Arenado.

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🔽 Brewers (59-36): They’re still leading the NL Central by six games despite getting swept in a doubleheader by the Pirates but the more pressing concern is their rotation has taken a few big hits. Ace Jacob Misiorowski is being skipped on his next start and won’t pitch in the All-Star Game due to fatigue which is no surprise given he has thrown about a million pitcher above 100 mph this season. Also, their No. 2 starter, Kyle Harrison who is having the best season of his career, went on the IL with forearm tightness. And former ace Brandon Woodruff, who missed all of 2024 and part of 2025 after shoulder surgery, is back on the IL after making nine starts this year.

🔽 Athletics (41-54): With a young and vibrant offense, the A’s were a team many believed would fight for the AL West title or at least an AL wild-card berth but they have been vastly disappointing. They lost 1-0 to the White Sox, their eight straight loss and 12th in their last 13 games during which they’ve been outscored 87-37. On top of that, star first baseman Nick Kurtz just went on the IL with a thumb injury, joining DH Brent Rooker and outfielder Zach Gelof.

🔽 Mariners (47-49): Talk about disappointing teams, Seattle is right near the top of the list as their loss to the Rays was their fifth straight. The Mariners were three innings away from playing in the 2025 World Series before Toronto’s George Springer hit a three-run homer in Game 7 of the ALCS. From that to this, a team that is 28th in MLB with a .229 average including an Austin Wells-like .168 from Cal Raleigh, a guy who hit 60 homers last year. Yet Seattle is still just 1.5 games behind the Rangers in the terrible AL West.

🎤 Damon Oppenheimer, Yankees VP of domestic amateur scouting on first-round pick Hunter Dietz: “Hunter is right up our alley. He has a big left-handed arm with a deluxe fastball and a breaking ball that can be a wipeout pitch. We think he has a chance to have power stuff from the left side with swing-and-miss potential. He was able to showcase this against hitters in the SEC while at Arkansas.” Dietz, who was the No. 35 overall pick in Saturday’s first round of the draft, had an injury-shortened career at Arkansas but in 2026 had a 3.57 ERA, 131 strikeouts and 31 walks over 85.2 innings.

🎤 Roch Cholowsky, who was picked No. 1 overall by the White Sox: “It’s awesome. I know I’m not going straight to the big leagues, there’s a lot of work that needs to be put in. But seeing how well the team at the top is doing and the moves they're making, the way they’re playing, it’s definitely a lot more motivation to get up there and join those guys at some point. Being able to be part of a contender is pretty cool. I value winning a lot.” The UCLA shortstop went to the same high school in Arizona as Cody Bellinger.

🎤 White Sox GM Chris Getz on picking Landon Thome, the son of Hall of Famer Jim Thome with their second first-round pick: “There was nothing surprising, let’s put it that way. Landon, a lot of attention because of Jim, but we’ve known Landon for a long time. We know the Thome family and what they are about. We know it’s important to dive into support systems and what you are getting from a player and to know what we are getting with Landon. We are very confident he’s going to reach his ceiling because of how he was raised.” Jim Thome played four years for the White Sox and is now a special assistant to Getz.

As ballpark promotions go, Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park certainly had good intentions in my book because, as a rock ‘n roll guy, I loathed disco during its thankfully brief tenure in the late 1970s.

But White Sox owner Bill Veeck, one of the great promoters in sports history, a man who was never afraid to take a chance in an effort to get more fans to the ballpark, could not have envisioned the disaster that unfolded on this night.

The idea was simple enough, and Chicago disc jockey Steve Dahl was the point man. His rock station, 97.9 WLUP sponsored the promotion, so anyone who brought a disco record to the doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers would be admitted for 98 cents.

The Sox, struggling through a tough year, figured maybe 20,000 fans would show up. Instead, more than 50,000 rowdies were on hand, with thousands more outside the park trying to get in without tickets. Most of them brought records which were supposed to be collected at the gate and then put into a large crate which Dahl would detonate, in the outfield, between games.

After the Tigers won the opener, Dahl took the field and got the already nutty crowd whipped into a frenzy before lighting the crate and blowing it up. And then pandemonium ensued. Many of the records had not been turned in so fans began throwing them like Frisbees onto the field, then thousands stormed onto the field, creating additional damage to the playing surface which was already a mess because of the fire.

With Chicago police in riot gear trying to get the fans off the field, the second game was called off, and American League commissioner Lee MacPhail decided to make the White Sox forfeit rather than reschedule.

“Beer and baseball go together, they have for years, but I think those kids were doing things other than beer,” Tigers manager Sparky Anderson said.