The Mets gift-wrap history as the Red Sox complete a perfect road trip
Boston rises from the dead in the ninth, wins its ninth straight game and sends the Mets into the All-Star break wearing a clown nose.
Final: Red Sox 3, Mets 2 — 10 innings
Today is Monday, July 13, 2026, and the latest completed Red Sox game was Sunday afternoon’s 3-2, ten-inning victory over the New York Mets at Citi Field. Boston finished an absolutely absurd 9-0 road trip, swept its third consecutive series and extended its winning streak to nine games. The Red Sox are now 46-48, having somehow transformed from a roadside tire fire into a legitimate nuisance in the American League playoff race.
For eight innings, this looked like the kind of game Boston had spent the first half losing.
The offense was comatose. Mets rookie Zach Thornton carved through the lineup for seven scoreless innings, allowing Boston to accomplish approximately nothing with tremendous efficiency. The Red Sox managed only four baserunners through the first eight innings and trailed 2-0 entering the ninth.
Then the Mets remembered they were the Mets.
And everything changed.
Francisco Lindor enters the witness protection program
Ceddanne Rafaela opened the ninth with a single, giving Boston the faintest flicker of life. Not a roaring fire. Not even a candle. More like the little red light on a smoke detector telling you the battery is about to die at 2:14 in the morning.
The Mets brought in Devin Williams, who was attempting to earn his 100th career save. Instead, he participated in an escape-room exercise where the only objective was to locate the strike zone before an entire franchise collapsed.
With one out, Masataka Yoshida hit what should have been a routine, game-ending double-play ball to Francisco Lindor.
Should have been.
Lindor misplayed it.
The ball bounced away. Everybody was safe. The Mets’ dugout collectively developed the facial expression of people who had just realized they left their passports in an Uber.
Boston was alive. New York was beginning to smell smoke.
Williams then walked Anthony Seigler, loading the bases, and walked Andruw Monasterio to force home Boston’s first run. Jarren Duran followed with a bloop RBI single that dropped into shallow left field, tying the game at two.
The Red Sox had gone from being shut out to tied in a matter of minutes without hitting anything that required NASA tracking equipment.
It was not an offensive explosion. It was a home invasion.
Boston entered the inning 0-43 when trailing after eight innings this season. On attempt number 44, the Mets handed them the keys, the alarm code and a complimentary fruit basket.
Small ball, big humiliation
Aroldis Chapman worked a clean bottom of the ninth, sending the game to extras.
Masataka Yoshida began the tenth as the automatic runner at second. The Red Sox advanced him to third and then let Anthony Seigler do something painfully unfashionable in modern baseball: hit a useful sacrifice fly.
Seigler lifted the ball deep enough to center field, Yoshida scored and Boston took a 3-2 lead.
No 470-foot homer.
No theatrical bat flip.
No exit-velocity graphic requiring an advanced mathematics degree.
Just move the runner, hit the ball in the air and collect the run.
Garrett Whitlock then retired all three Mets he faced in the bottom of the tenth to earn his second save and complete the sweep. New York’s offense outside of Lindor went 0-for-15 among its other starters, which is difficult to do unless everyone is swinging a rolled-up copy of the Sunday newspaper.
The Mets fell to 40-57, entered the break 17 games under .500 and are now competing less for a playoff berth than for the right to have their season narrated by a disappointed school principal.
Bello returns from Worcester and looks like a pitcher again
Lost in the circus was an important development for Boston.
Brayan Bello, recalled from Triple-A Worcester before the game, delivered 4⅓ innings of relief, allowing only two hits and one run while striking out five and walking nobody on 55 pitches. His lone mistake was a solo home run by Lindor.
This mattered.
Bello had been optioned in June after going 2-6 with a 6.34 ERA over 12 appearances. That was not a slump. That was an arson investigation.
But Sunday’s version attacked hitters, avoided free passes and gave Boston precisely what it needed after Payton Tolle’s start. Tolle and Bello combined to keep the game close enough for the Mets to eventually drop it down an elevator shaft.
A team cannot manufacture a comeback if the pitchers allow the deficit to become six runs. Boston’s staff held New York to two, absorbed the lineup’s eight-inning nap and waited for the inevitable Mets malfunction.
That is what good teams do.
Or, at minimum, that is what teams that are no longer actively sabotaging themselves do.
Nine straight wins — all on the road
Boston’s nine-game winning streak has come entirely away from Fenway Park, including consecutive sweeps of the Angels, White Sox and Mets. MLB noted that the Red Sox had not produced a road-trip feat like this since 1977.
Let that marinate.
This club began the trip at 37-48. The season appeared ready for burial. Trade-deadline conversations were drifting toward who should be sold, which veterans might be moved and whether the front office would once again explain failure using a PowerPoint presentation filled with the words “process” and “long-term flexibility.”
Nine games later, Boston is 46-48.
Still under .500, yes. Nobody needs to schedule the duck boats because Francisco Lindor booted a ground ball in Queens.
But the Red Sox have created an entirely different second-half conversation.
They are no longer merely hanging around because the standings are mediocre. They are winning close games, getting major outs from the bullpen, receiving contributions from unheralded players and refusing to disappear when an opponent has them down.
That is not nothing.
The great take: Was this the moment the season changed?
The temptation is to dismiss this win as a gift.
Lindor made the error. Williams lost the strike zone. Duran’s tying hit was a blooper. Boston scored the winning run through the automatic runner and a sacrifice fly.
None of it was majestic.
But perhaps that is exactly the point.
Bad teams wait for perfect conditions. They need the starter to dominate, the stars to homer and every bounce to behave properly. When one thing goes wrong, they fold themselves into a lawn chair.
Good teams remain close enough to steal games when the opponent cracks.
Boston spent eight innings being outplayed. It did not panic. The pitching staff kept the deficit manageable. Rafaela started the rally. Yoshida put the ball in play. Seigler accepted a walk and later delivered the sacrifice fly. Monasterio took ball four. Duran dumped the tying hit into open grass. Chapman and Whitlock slammed the door.
The Red Sox did not win because one superstar carried them.
They won because nine different little things went right after the Mets gave them one opening.
That is the intriguing part of this streak. Boston suddenly looks less like a collection of individual players and more like a team learning how to win games it has no business winning.
The question heading into the second half is no longer whether the Red Sox can look good for a week.
The question is whether this nine-game run revealed something real—or merely delayed the front office’s inevitable opportunity to ruin everybody’s summer.
We are about to find out.
Nine wins. Three sweeps. A flawless road trip. And one final public mugging of the Mets before the All-Star break.
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