The Boston Red Sox have not lost since the Fourth of July, and on Saturday they turned the season’s most improbable run into something the franchise had not seen in nearly eight decades. A 6-1 win over the first-place Tampa Bay Rays completed a four-game sweep at Fenway Park and pushed Boston’s winning streak to 13, its longest since 1948.
Willson Contreras supplied the decisive swing, a two-run homer that broke the game open, and Sonny Gray handled the rest. Gray worked six innings and allowed a single run on five hits, walking four but striking out five and stranding traffic each time it mattered. The lone Tampa Bay run came on a Victor Mesa Jr. home run; otherwise the Rays managed little against a Boston staff that has held opponents in check for two weeks straight. Ceddanne Rafaela added two hits in the series finale.
The number carries weight in this market. Thirteen straight is the longest Red Sox run since the 1948 club matched it, and it trails only the 15-game streak from 1946 in team history, per Boston Globe reporting. Boston has swept four consecutive series — the Angels, White Sox, Mets and now the Rays — and at 50-48 sits two games above .500 for the first time all season. A team that looked like a seller three weeks ago is 21-5 over its last 26 games.
For Tampa Bay, the sweep is the harder story. The Rays still lead the AL East at 56-42, but a fifth straight loss has trimmed their cushion to a game and a half over the Yankees, and the offense that carried them through the spring has gone cold at the worst possible time.
For fantasy managers, Gray is trending back toward the arm he was drafted to be; three strong starts in a row make him a confident play even in tough matchups. Contreras stays locked into the middle of a lineup that is scoring in bunches, and streaming Red Sox bats against Tampa Bay’s rotation paid off all weekend. On the Rays’ side, Mesa’s homer is a bright spot in an otherwise quiet stretch, but there is little reason to chase Tampa Bay hitters until the lineup shows life again.
