The team’s road to October takes a day off on Thursday, as the Sox spend an off-day in Seattle, getting ready for three games against the last-place Mariners. The Sox hit the Pacific Northwest with the best road record in the American League. It’s a pretty remarkable stat, considering they started the season with seven straight losses away from Fenway Park.
They have done it with an offense that is averaging 5.5 runs per game. They have done it with big offensive nights like the eight-run, 17-hit attack in Minnesota on Monday and the four-run, six-hit attack a night later.
David Ortiz typified the difference between the two nights. On Monday, he hit a home run that measured about 440 feet as part of a come-from-behind win. On Tuesday, it was Big Papi’s dribbler down the first-base line that gave the Sox the go-ahead run. That ball traveled approximately 40 feet.
With Tuesday’s win, the Sox secured their eighth consecutive road series win. That’s a club record. They are the best road offense in the baseball, and have hit more home runs away from home than any other team in the game.
All of this success on the road couldn’t come at a better time.
The Sox are currently in a stretch during which they play 14 of 17 games away from Fenway Park, all of them outside the Eastern Time Zone. After a weekend in Seattle, they will return for a crash-and-burn three-game series against Tampa Bay that will be played in about 27 hours.
After that, it’s back on the plane for a four-game set in Kansas City, followed by four in the Texas heat. They will then finish the month of August with the start of a nine-game homestand.
After taking two of three from the Yankees over the weekend, and with the Angels losing to the Yankees on Tuesday night, the Sox are almost assured of a playoff spot. The question now is whether they can nail down the division and secure home-field advantage in the first round. If they cannot, they might wind up spending the first days of October in Arlington facing the defending AL champs.
It would be much better to spend those days at Fenway, even if the Sox have such a strong road record. For as good as those numbers are, their success on Yawkey Way is even better. They’ve got more wins, have scored more runs and hit much better at the Fens.
Next year, things will probably be completely different. Major League Baseball seems determined to add another round of playoffs to the postseason schedule. The idea is to get more teams into the playoff chase and to add more late-season excitement to more cities.
The byproduct of an expanded playoff field is the fact that winning the division and avoiding a first-round “miniseries” would be an important goal for any team. The Sox and Yanks would be fighting much harder for the division title if the wild card meant a one- or three-game series for survival.
But that’s a conversation for next season. Right now, we can start making plans for the return of postseason baseball to Boston. There’s still a long road ahead for the Sox, but they’ve already proven they can handle anything they might encounter during the journey.
