Whicker: Red-hot Red Sox have gone from “everything-must-go to anything goes”

The red-hot Boston Red Sox had their franchise record-tying 15-game winning streak snapped on Wednesday. Photo: Boston Red Sox

July 23, 2026

By Mark Whicker

Canadian Baseball Network

A month ago the Red Sox were one of those stricken, broken-down malls on the next exit ramp.

Their only remaining highlight would be the Aug. 3 trade deadline. Speculators gathered at the empty storefronts. Everything must go.

They had already downsized to the No. 12 payroll in the game, even though Fenway Park was still an active goldmine. They claimed they couldn’t afford to bring back Alex Bregman, whom they had signed in 2025. On June 24 they lost at Colorado, 8–6, their seventh loss in their last 10. They were 32-46, and “chief baseball officer” Craig Breslow, who had fired manager Alex Cora in April, was the lamest duck since Keir Starmer.

Fans debated on whether setup reliever Garrett Whitlock should be traded before 38-year-old closer Aroldis Chapman, or vice versa, or maybe both. For such a sports-intensive city, with championship parades practically engraved on the calendar, it seemed a long, long way until Patriots season.

On Wednesday night the Red Sox lost at home to Baltimore, 5-1. A visitor from June wouldn’t have been surprised by the score, but nothing else seemed to make sense. Most of the crowd of 38,000 gave the Sox a hearty ovation. The “get-in” price was $200. All of it signaled one of the more drastic U-turns in recent MLB history. Boston’s loss snapped a 15-game winning streak, tied for the most in Red Sox annals, and had followed a makeup game in the afternoon in which the Sox spanked Baltimore, 6-3, in front of 35,000. The Red Sox were above the playoff line in the American League and had come within a game of sweeping five consecutive series of three or more games, which they had never done. For a team that seemed ready to ship out live bodies for charity, good will had replaced Goodwill.

The Red Sox endured 86 years without a world championship, then won in 2004, 2007 and 2013, and along the way became as corporate and forbidding as the Yankees they despise. This team is still miles from even playing in the postseason, but it has that unsinkable resilience that Boston fans embrace. They’re doing this without Garrett Crochet, who could easily have won last year’s Cy Young Award, and Roman Anthony, supposedly their next hitting savant. They trail the American League in home runs, the only team that hasn’t hit 100. They spread so little fear that they’ve only been intentionally walked four times all season. They’re being led, statistically, by first baseman Willson Contreras (22 homers, 66 RBIs) and 36-year-old righthander Sonny Gray (12-1, 2.48 ERA), whose fastball tops out at 92 mph. Breslow brought them both in from St. Louis, and also signed lefty Ranger Suarez (1.161 WHIP) as a free agent. It has taken him less than a month to go from baseball illiteracy to the portfolio of a Yale grad who majored in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, which he was.

Some interesting stories can be found in the breach. Rookie second baseman Anthony Seigler was a catcher who was a switch-hitter and also a switch-thrower. He was born in Fort Defiance, Ariz., which would be a good nickname for Fenway Park these days. His mother Alysia is Navajo, and Seigler is the second Navajo to play in the majors, following ex-Red Sox outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury. Seigler’s dad Todd played at an Arizona junior college where he met, and befriended, Tony Phillips, the infielder on Oakland’s Bash Brothers teams. They became close, and that’s why Anthony is Anthony.

Caleb Durbin came over in a trade with Milwaukee, and immediately became a blinking-red target. Not only was he playing third base in Bregman’s stead, but he was hitting .141, 25 games into the season. But Durbin is hitting .236 now, and on three occasions in the streak he got the BLT hit, the one that Broke the Last Tie in the game. Besides, Durbin is accustomed to shrapnel. He was hit by pitches 24 times last year, leading the National League. That’s not easy when you’re as short as he is or, as he says, “five-foot-seven with shoes on.”

Durbin was the only Division III college player to play regularly in MLB last year. He went to Washington University in St. Louis, where baseball scholarships are nonexistent, and got his economics degree online while he was playing in the minors.

But while the human interest stories come and go, Whitlock and Chapman should be the constant.

In the first game Wednesday, Whitlock pitched a perfect eighth in 12 pitches, and Chapman worked the ninth with two baserunners and 13 pitches. Chapman has seven saves and a win in eight appearances during the streak, giving up four hits and striking out eight. Whitlock has yielded two hits in July, working the eighth six times to set up Chapman. Together they’ve pitched 69 1/3 innings with 51 hits and 79 strikeouts for the year.

This is the way bullpens used to work, before the analysts convinced the managers to look for favorable matchups, and that a “high leverage” situation could determine a ballgame long before the ninth inning. The way interim manager Chad Tracy does it? Tell Whitlock he has the eighth inning and tell Chapman he has the ninth. No need to check the opposing lineup card. It’s the way Oakland’s great bullpens worked, with Gene Nelson making sure things were nice and quiet for Dennis Eckersley. Before Mariano Rivera became the world’s greatest closer, he was the setup man for John Wetteland when the Yankees won in 1996. Before Troy Percival became an All-Star closer in Anaheim, he was the precursor to Lee Smith. Such combinations essentially create seven-inning games, and reward the teams who know how to conjure up runs in the middle innings to create leads. And when the Phillies’ Brad Lidge went 41-for-41 in save situations during the championship season of 2008, he had two able wingmen: J.C. Romero and Ryan Madsen.

Whitlock is 30, a former top pick of the Yankees who was made available in the Rule V draft after he’d recovered from Tommy John surgery. He was a swingman until he told Cora he felt more comfortable in the bullpen, and he also ditched his four-seam fastball in favor of a sinker, making him a throwback sinker-slider pitcher. During the All-Star break, Whitlock and his family toured Cape Cod, but he still needed to stick to his throwing program. He encountered members of the Rockport (Mass.) High team and got them to play catch with him on the beach.

Over Labor Day weekend In 2023, Whitlock lost his brother Gavrie, who slipped on a dock at Lake Lanier, near Atlanta, fell in and drowned.

“Hug the ones who love,” he said later. “You never know how much time you have left.”

In Wednesday’s first game, Chapman tied Eckersley for ninth place on the all-time saves list. He has hit 100 mph this year, but his four-seamer is averaging 97 and his sinker is averaging 98. Through his 18-year career Chapman is averaging 14.4 strikeouts per nine innings, and the .207 average he is giving up is actually a career high. With 22 more outs, Chapman will hit the 40-inning mark that will activate his 2027 contract, and pay him more than $26 million for ‘26-’27. Nothing indicates Chapman doesn’t have one more prime year left.

“Especially when you look at those pipes,” Eckersley said as he visited the Boston TV booth on Thursday, and saw a shot of Chapman in the bullpen, sleeveless.

Given health, those who expect to derail the Red Sox will have to avoid Whitlock and Chapman, whether it’s now or in the playoffs. Two treacherous months lie ahead, but Boston has gone from everything-must-go to anything goes.