BOSTON — Three weeks ago, the Red Sox were planning to sell.
On Wednesday night, Aroldis Chapman jogged off the Fenway Park mound with his 390th career save, tying Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley for ninth on the all-time list, and the Boston clubhouse had tied something else entirely: the longest winning streak in 125 years of franchise history.
The Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles 6-3 in the first game of a Wednesday doubleheader, their 15th consecutive victory, matching a standard set in 1946 when Ted Williams anchored one of the most celebrated Boston lineups of the century. No Red Sox team had strung together 15 straight wins in the eight decades since.
The franchise record doesn’t carry an asterisk. But the context that surrounds it might matter more than the number itself. Boston entered July below .500, widely cited as a probable seller at the August 1 trade deadline. The last 21 days have dismantled that calculus completely.
Caleb Durbin singled home two runs in the fourth inning to extend a lead that Boston would never relinquish. The 26-year-old second baseman has become the team’s most reliable offensive engine during the run, hitting .351 over his last 10 games with an on-base percentage that has stabilized a lineup built around power. His two-run single came on a 2-1 fastball from Orioles starter Dean Kremer, who had otherwise kept Boston off balance through three innings.
Jarren Duran delivered what turned out to be the decisive blow in the fifth, a two-run triple off the wall in right center that drove in the fourth and fifth runs. He also added a sacrifice fly in the sixth. Three runs batted in on the night. The center fielder, who spent the first half of the season recovering from a knee strain that sapped much of his early production, has looked fully healthy during the winning run. His triple Wednesday was hit at 104.1 mph off the bat, the hardest-struck ball either team put in play.
Ceddanne Rafaela added a solo home run in the seventh. Willson Contreras, whose three-year deal has produced one of Boston’s better offensive seasons at catcher in recent memory, went 1-for-3 with a walk. The catcher is slashing .287/.368/.573 with 22 home runs and 66 RBI through 99 games, numbers that have drawn quiet comparisons to his best season in St. Louis.
Jake Bennett started and gave the Red Sox exactly what they needed in the absence of certainty from the rotation. Five and two-thirds innings, three earned runs, four strikeouts, per CBS Sports. His ERA since June 15 stands at 2.58, a number that would have seemed implausible when he entered the season with 14 career major league starts. Bennett has been the thread connecting a rotation that has cycled through injuries and inconsistency while still winning.
Chapman, who turned 38 in February, entered in the ninth with a three-run lead and struck out the side on 11 pitches. Save number 23 this season. The 390th of a career that began in Cincinnati in 2010, that has included a domestic violence suspension, three World Series rings, and a fastball that still sits at 98 miles per hour in the ninth inning on a July night. Eckersley, whose record Chapman matched, retired in 1998. According to two players who spoke after the game, the milestone number had been circulating in the dugout during the eighth inning.
The 1946 Red Sox won 15 in a row before the streak ended in late August, a run that defined a pennant-winning season. That team went on to lose the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games, a series remembered most for Enos Slaughter’s mad dash home in Game 7. This Red Sox team is not yet in the postseason, and the parallels to 1946 extend only so far.
Boston’s record now sits at 52-48, good for second place in the American League East and inside the wild card picture. The Tampa Bay Rays, who held the second wild card entering Wednesday, lost to Toronto in 11 innings, which means Boston now sits within one game of a postseason berth. Five weeks remain before September call-ups change the landscape.
The trade deadline conversation has shifted accordingly. According to ESPN, Boston’s front office has pivoted from listening on veterans to pursuing upgrades, with starting pitching remaining the stated priority. That calculus shifted permanently during the team’s run through the Yankees, somewhere around winning streak game eight or nine.
Among a recent wave of wins that included a sweep of the New York Yankees and a four-game series over Toronto, the consistency has been the more impressive detail. Boston has won these 15 games by an average of three runs. They have not trailed after the seventh inning in any of them. Chapman has allowed one baserunner in his last 11 appearances.
Whether any of this translates to October remains the open question. No Red Sox team has ever won 16 consecutive games. The second game of Wednesday’s doubleheader against Baltimore offered the first answer to that narrower version of the question. The franchise record, for now, belongs to 2026 and 1946 equally.
