When Alex Cora held his first press conference of the season, he made the themes for the season clear: Work and get better. The rest will take care of itself.
“This year is about working and getting better,” the manager said back on Feb. 11. “If we do that over 162 games, things will take care of themselves and we’ll be dancing in October.”
He was right — and it only took 160 games. For the first time since 2021, the Red Sox are dancing in October, snapping a three-year drought with those same principles — work and getting better — at the forefront of their success.
“It feels good," said Cora. "Ownership did an outstanding job during the offseason. Craig and the group were amazing throughout. This is a really good team. It’s a good team. Obviously, the fun starts next week.”
It wasn’t always easy. Entering June, they were 28-32, in a worse spot than they had been the previous three seasons. At the century mark, they sat at 53-47 — the exact same record they had the last two years. But this time, it was different.
Since June 1, the Red Sox have gone 47-28, the best record in the American League and the second-best in baseball. Getting better.
The work showed, too. They went 32-20 (.615) against divisional opponents, their best mark within the division since 2018. They are now 47-32 at Fenway, their most home wins since 2021, which also happened to be their last playoff appearance. Both are areas Cora stresses heavily — and both saw major improvement.
And then there were the comebacks. Their 38 come-from-behind wins, capped by Friday night’s thriller, showed exactly what this team is made of. Justin Slaten, Steven Matz, Greg Weissert, Zach Kelly, Garrett Whitlock, and Aroldis Chapman stepped up after Kyle Harrison’s short outing — just three innings with seven hits, three walks, and three earned runs. The bullpen answered with six scoreless innings, allowing three hits, walking one, and striking out six.
Meanwhile, the offense, after being limited to just four hits and watching eight straight batters retired in the middle innings, came alive in the seventh — sparked by Masataka Yoshida. Five different Red Sox reached safely in the final three innings, none bigger than the ever-clutch Ceddanne Rafaela, who sent Boston into a celebration four years in the making.
“The kid [Rafaela], there’s something about him," said Cora. "It was a total team effort. It’s been like that the whole season, right? The way it ended, it didn’t surprise me.”
It felt different with this team all year. The arrivals of All-Stars Alex Bregman, Garrett Crochet, and Chapman played a big part in that. So did the emergence of Carlos Narvaez and the growth of Rafaela, Romy Gonzalez, and Wilyer Abreu. And you can’t forget about the kids, led by Roman Anthony. The list goes on and on. It was a collective effort from a resilient group that never stopped working — and never stopped getting better.
"Looking back on the year, just believing in this group is a big reason why I wanted to be in Boston," said Bregman. "Believing that we could go to the playoffs and win, and I mean, to feel the energy in the stadium tonight. That's what it's all about. It’s been awesome.”
After three seasons of finishing at or below .500 and 47 months without a playoff game, the cycle of shortcomings is finally over.
"This is what we've been working for,” said Trevor Story. “The past three years felt really bad. Obviously, we haven't played the way we wanted to, but we feel like this is the start of something special."
Special also described the scene inside the Red Sox clubhouse — the beer showers, the cigars, the hugs, the chaos. It was the release of a group that believed in one another, trusted what they were capable of, and in the process snapped a three-year stretch of frustration and failure.
But they aren’t content with simply making it back to the dance.
“It feels good, but we’re not satisfied,” said Crochet. “We’ve still got a lot of games we intend on playing.”