I wrote it last week, and I’ll write again here:
The Boston Red Sox (82-68) need to win their three-game series against the fourth-place Oakland/Sacramento/Las Vegas Athletics (70-80).
That series gets underway Tuesday evening at Fenway Park, marking the first of Boston’s final 12 games of the 2025 regular season:
- Three at home vs. Oakland
- Three on the road @ Tampa (73-77)
- Three on the road @ Toronto (88-62)
- Three at home vs. Detroit (85-65)
The first six games of this final stretch need to be taken advantage of by Boston, especially with the likes of the Rangers (79-72), Astros (82-69 and Mariners (82-68) all nipping at their heels, as well as the Yankees (83-67) continuing to hold a slight lead in the standings.
The final six games are against two of the best teams in all of baseball. You could tell me they’ll split. You could tell me they’ll lose all six. You could tell me they’ll win four out of six. With how Jekyll and Hyde this team has been this season, I’m mentally prepared for any and all scenarios.
That’s why stacking wins against teams they’re clearly better than is so important right now.
One of those three AL West teams mentioned above is going to win the division. The other two will be looking to fill two of the three wild card positions in the American League - positions that the Red Sox and Yankees are also vying for on a nightly basis.
The margin for error is gone for Boston. They were unable to stack enough wins against mediocre-to-bad teams earlier this month, and now they sit in a position where every single win counts, and scoreboard watching will be a must.
Monday night, for example, was a night that could be chalked up as a win for Boston despite not even taking the field for a game. That’s because on the scoreboard watching front, things broke their way:
- With the Rangers losing to the Astros 6-3, Boston is now 3.5 games up ahead of Texas for a playoff spot
- Houston’s win over their cross-state rival helps them gain ground on Boston, but still see them a half-game behind the Red Sox for the second wild card position heading into Tuesday
- Yankees got stomped 7-0 by the Twins (66-84), dropping game one of their three-game set at Target Field in Minneapolis
While a Yankees loss is always sweet for Red Sox fans, every loss down the stretch of the season is going to be even sweeter.
Monday’s loss puts the Red Sox just a game behind New York for the top wild card spot in the American League - a position that would determine who will get all three home games of the three-game wild card round this postseason if the teams ultimately end up finishing in these two spots.
Even with the Yankees taking care of business on both Friday and Saturday night at Fenway, we all know the Bronx Bombers want no part of playing three-consecutive postseason games at baseball’s oldest ballpark. They’d much rather play in their shoebox in the South Bronx, and I don’t blame them. Their roster is engineered for success in that park.
If the Red Sox play at their ceiling come October, it shouldn’t matter where they face the Yankees. Even with Boston dropping the series this past weekend, they remain 9-4 against the Yankees on the season - a mark that includes a 5-3 record behind enemy lines.
Pick a time, pick a place, and the Red Sox are confident they can handle the Yankees.
With that said, they’d much rather get their hands on them with the CITGO sign in the background.
They’ll be in a good position to continue solidifying their spot in the postseason with the three-game set with the A’s getting underway, as we just saw what Boston can do to this team.
Boston took 2 out of 3 from the A’s out in Sacramento last week, with their offense rising from the dead in both game one and game two of the series. Sure it may have been a product of the ballpark (Sactown has become a mini Coors Field, of sorts, for hitters), but Boston’s lineup was-and-is clearly a bad matchup for A’s starters Luis Morales (4-1, 3.08 ERA) and Jeffrey Springs (10-11, 4.28).
Boston will have another chance to knock around Springs on Tuesday, as he’ll take the mound for the A’s. The 32-year-old lefty is a mostly-forgotten one-time Red Sox, spending one dreadful season as a reliever in Boston as a member of the atrocious 2020 team (24-36) - a season that really should be wiped from the record books all together given all the weirdness that was happening around the sport and the world at large.
Springs had a career-high 7.08 ERA across 20.1 innings of work in 18 total appearances. If you don’t remember that, I don’t blame you.
Something you almost certainly remember heading into Tuesday’s matchup is last week’s MLB debut of young Connelly Early (1-0, 0.00 ERA), who tied a Red Sox rookie debut record with 11 strikeouts against Oakland in a dominant 6-0 win for Boston.
Tuesday will mark his Fenway debut, with fans clamoring to see if last Wednesday was a preview of what’s to come for the 23-year-old down the stretch run of 2025.
First pitch in Boston is set for 6:45 p.m. ET.
Tom Carroll is a contributor for Roundtable, with boots-on-the-ground coverage of all things Boston sports. He's a digital content producer for WEEI.com, and a native of Lincoln, RI.