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BOSTON — The Red Sox won their 15th straight game with a 6-3 win over the Orioles in Game 1 of their doubleheader on Wednesday, tying a franchise record.
“It feels good. It feels normal,” Jarren Duran said.
There’s nothing normal about it.
Even the juggernaut 2018 Red Sox — who won a franchise-record 108 regular-season games — never mounted a winning streak that exceeded 10 games.
The 1946 Red Sox — led by Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr and Dom DiMaggio — are the only other team in Boston’s 126-year history to do it. The 1946 club won 15 straight games from April 25 through May 10 of that season.
“The fact that we’ve reached that, it’s a pretty amazing accomplishment,” interim manager Chad Tracy said. “That being said, we’ve got another game to play and we’ve gotta get ready to go out there and play again.”
Boston (52-48) needs to turn the page quickly. Tracy’s team will try for a new franchise record of 16 straight wins in Game 2 of the doubleheader at 7:10 p.m. Rookie Eduardo Rivera (0-0, 2.89 ERA) will start for Boston opposite Orioles right-hander Kyle Bradish (6-9, 3.61 ERA).
“They’ve accomplished something great,” Tracy said, adding the team will have fun with it for about 15 minutes before preparing for the nightcap.
Third baseman Caleb Durbin said the Red Sox didn’t think much about the streak until sweeping a doubleheader against the Rays on Friday, their first two games coming out of the All-Star break. That put them at 11 straight wins and brought their record to .500 (48-48) for the first time since March 28, when they were 1-1.
“First, it was just get to .500,” Durbin said. “Get to .500 as quick as possible so we could get back in this thing. And then after that, it was like looking up and wow, we’ve got kind of a cool streak going. Let’s keep it going.”
It’s the first time a major league team has won 15 or more straight games since the 2021 St. Louis Cardinals, who had a 17-game winning streak from Sept. 11-28 of that season.
“You keep stacking one win over another, and then you get close, and then the games, once you get within three or four, they start to feel like playoff games because you want to get there, which is also a great experience,” Durbin said. “But then you look back at it, think about where you’re doing it and how long this franchise has existed, it’s pretty incredible.”
Duran said he knew this team — which was 14 games under .500 on June 24 — eventually would go on a run. But a run like this?
“Yeah, why not?” he replied.
Few could have ever predicted this.
“They should relish in that — that your names are going to be forever etched right at the top of that list for what they’ve done," Tracy said. “I know I’ve kept it pretty low-key, but that’s not lost on us what they’ve done.”
The Sox took a 4-0 lead in the first inning against Orioles right-handed starter Dean Kremer and never trailed.
“I think any time you can get out to an early lead is big, but especially with everything that’s at stake with the streak,” Durbin said. “I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t in the back of our heads a little bit. So it’s fun. We’re embracing it, though. We want to keep winning.”
Singles by Masataka Yoshida, Ceddanne Rafaela and Willson Contreras loaded the bases for Durbin, who delivered a two-run single to make it 2-0.
“I feel like we’ve been kind of on that grind lately of scoring early and scoring fast,” Duran said.
Duran followed with a two-run triple.
“I was a little exhausted,” Duran said. “I haven’t had a lot of those this year. I kind of took my time getting up at third and Eppy (third base coach Chad Epperson) was like, ‘Are you OK?’ I was like, ‘Yeah. I’m just embracing this triple. I haven’t had one of those in a while.’ So it was fun to run the bases.”
Red Sox rookie starter Jake Bennett pitched 5 ⅔ innings, allowing three runs. Justin Slaten, Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman finished it off with 3 ⅓ scoreless innings.
The Red Sox bullpen is 7-0 with a 1.08 ERA (58 ⅓ innings, seven earned runs) and nine saves during the 15-game winning streak.
For a second straight game, rookie shortstop Tsung-Che Cheng made a highlight-reel play to end it on Pete Alonso’s 109.9 mph groundball.
“He’s a very rangy player, instinctual player,” Tracy said. “Good first step. Obviously the play the other night was tremendous. That play today was hard. That ball was hit hard and if he comes this way, it’s probably going to eat him up. But he understands he’s got a little time to get that ball across the diamond.”
The players understand the historical significance of their streak but they didn’t make a big deal about it postgame in the clubhouse.
“We maybe chatted about it amongst ourselves, but very much just another day,” Durbin said. “And that’s kind of how we’ve been treating it. And it’s probably how we’ll treat this next one. We want it. There’s a little bit more at stake. You can feel it, but not a whole lot of extra pressure added amongst the group.”
Tracy said he didn’t say anything to the team after the win.
“I don’t think I need to,” Tracy said. “We’ve gone through a lot and they’re well aware of what’s going on and don’t have to say much right now to get them fired up.”
Boston has won 20 of its past 22 games.
“I feel like it took us a while to realize what our identity was,” Duran said. “And we’ve kind of found it, and we just been rolling with it, and it’s been working.”
Duran described their identity as “a scrappy team.”
“I feel like we’re going to get guys over ... Just put the ball in play. And I feel like we’ve got a lot of athletes on this team,” Duran said. “We’ve seen the past couple days just putting the ball in play and putting pressure on the defense. Like Rafa (Ceddanne Rafaela) and Durbin able to beat out ground balls and stuff like that. Yeah, it’s just been fun to see.”
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