They are four games out of a wild card spot, with five teams in front of them.
They are eight games under .500.
In the last week, they have seen two more of their rotation pieces sidelined, with Connolly Early heading for a second opinion on his ailing left elbow and Ranger Suarez leaving Sunday night's 7-5 win over the Angels with left adductor tightness.
Roman Anthony is now trying to find his way back from his finger/wrist injury in Fort Myers, Fla.
According to Fangraphs, they have a 19.7 percent chance to simply make the playoffs.
Yet ...
With the three-game sweep of the Angels, the Red Sox have continued to earn the right to not break out the white flag quite yet, doing their best to reach the trade deadline in a place where the likes of Sonny Gray and/or Aroldis Chapman are part of their solution instead of somebody else's.
The Red Sox have now won eight of their last 10 games, and, perhaps most importantly, are starting to look like a team that can score enough runs to win. That part of the equation was always the thing keeping them away from being taken seriously. But now? Since weathering the travel nightmare coming back from Colorado 10 games ago, no team in baseball has more wins than the Sox.
It has been a stretch that can still be picked apart a bit, with those losses to the Nationals still stinging, along with the reality that this latest series came against the worst team in baseball. But even with the rash of injuries, there is the feeling that the puzzle pieces are starting to fit a bit better.
Case in point: Over these 10 games, there are five players (Romy Gonzalez, Willson Contreras, Ceddanne Rafaela, Caleb Durbin and Masa Yoshida) who carry an OPS of better than 1.000 with runners in scoring position. It's not the be-all, end-all, but it is a welcome about-face.
"I think overall this is the best. Not just the series, just the complete package of the offense that we're getting now," Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy said. "We're scoring runs early, we're scoring runs on starters, giving our starters a chance to pitch with leads. ... You go into the road trip knowing you got a nine-game kind of sprint to the All-Star break. ... This is a good start."
Tracy is right. This is a sprint. Part of that is due to the time the Red Sox have before needing to fish or cut bait at the trade deadline. The other element is the schedule. They took advantage of their trip to Anaheim. Now the challenge will be to keep the momentum going against a White Sox team that is not only in first place but also outrageously good at home. (Chicago is 28-14 at Rate Field.)
These three games represent the chance for the new-look Red Sox to feel like they truly belong.
Then comes what would seem to be another opportunity to build momentum going into the All-Star break, taking on the lowly Mets over the weekend. That sets up for a post-All-Star break stretch of 10 straight home games, all against American League East foes (Tampa Bay, Baltimore, Toronto). Considering the Sox are just 10-17 against clubs within their division, it would seem like another golden opportunity to prove times might be changing.
No Garrett Crochet. No Anthony. No Trevor Story. No Marcelo Mayer. No Brayan Bello. No Early. Maybe no Contreras (thanks to an impending suspension). And now, potentially no Suarez. This wasn't part of the July blueprint for Craig Breslow and Co. But it is what it is. And what it is , is one last chance to prove this is a team worth keeping together.
"It's really good," Contreras told reporters after the sweep. "We've been playing really good baseball for the last two weeks. It's really impressive the way we are going as a group to our business. We're going through every starter ... and trying to keep the momentum going."
