Red Sox sweep White Sox, continue to make a case for themselves

During Thursday's Front Office Report on The Greg Hill Show, Boston Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow was asked if he might become a buyer instead of a seller before the Aug. 3 trade deadline.

"We still have three and a half weeks before the trade deadline, so we're getting information about our team and about where we stand, our position every single day," Breslow said. "That said, everybody in my position wants to be in a place where it's very easy to justify adding to the team. You take these jobs, you join professional sports because you want to win championships. So, continuing to play well, putting ourselves in a really good position here is exactly what we want."

Well, the information gathered Thursday continued to be positive. The Red Sox went out and completed a series sweep with a 2-1 win over the Chicago White Sox, a team that had not lost a series at home since April prior to these last three days. The Red Sox have now won six in a row, a new season-best. They have pulled within 2.5 games of a wild card spot as of Thursday postgame.

The only negativity to be found was in the form of Willson Contreras beginning his suspension, but even that came with a couple silver linings. For one, Major League Baseball reduced his suspension for his role in last week's fracas against Washington from seven games to five. And two, it will give Contreras some extra time to rest his bruised foot after fouling a pitch off it Thursday night and leaving the game.

Everywhere else the Red Sox looked, they saw more encouraging signs. Patrick Sandoval made his Red Sox debut on the mound, pitching in a big-league game for the first time since undergoing Tommy John surgery in June 2024. He looked good, allowing just one run on five hits over 4 1/3 innings while striking out five and walking one.

"It was really good," interim manager Chad Tracy said of Sandoval's outing. "The velocity was up, which is good to see. He was in the strike zone, landing all of his pitches for strikes for the first time in 700 days or whatever it's been. Pretty darn good."

Offensively, everything the Red Sox needed came on one swing from Caleb Durbin, who launched a two-run homer to left in the fourth inning. Over his last 36 games, Durbin is now hitting .297 with eight home runs, 23 RBIs and an OPS over .900.

Once Sandoval exited the game in the fifth, the Boston bullpen slammed the door shut for the next 4 2/3 innings. Tyron Guerrero allowed an inherited runner to score, but that was the only damage done during his 1 2/3 innings of work. From there, Garrett Whitlock, Justin Slaten and Aroldis Chapman were all perfect in an inning each.

The defense behind them helped out when called upon, highlighted by a sliding catch by left fielder Jarren Duran in the bottom of the eighth and a diving catch by center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela in the ninth.

"They've been amazing all season," Tracy said of his bullpen. "Our pitching in general has been amazing all season. But that's a high leverage game from the fifth inning on, and you're asking a lot of people to come in and lock down a one-run game. You really can't have many mistakes. … They lock down for quite a bit of the game there. The bullpen, they were amazing."

The Red Sox are now 11-2 in their last 13 games, which is the best record in baseball during that time. It's a stretch that has included three sweeps in the span of four series, including two over playoff teams in the Yankees and White Sox.

Maybe they haven't quite made it "very easy to justify adding to the team" just yet, but the Red Sox are certainly making a case for Breslow to continue to wait things out and see where this goes over the next few weeks.