“And I love that dirty water … Boston you’re my ho—” oh, whoops, didn’t see you there. I was, uh, yeah I was celebrating the turnaround of the 2026 Boston Red Sox, I didn’t think I’d have to work today jeez. (takes off hat and Roman Anthony jersey) Oh, you want to know about the streak? Okay, let me get my glasses and then we can talk.

(ahem) The Boston Red Sox are on an absolute tear. They’ve gone 20-3 since June 25, won 15 straight games to tie their franchise record streak from the 1940s (!) and have turned around basically every aspect of their 2026 disasterclass to wrest control of the third American League Wild Card spot from the jaws of a confusing game of Musical Chairs/Duck Duck Goose. How on earth did we get here, and what does it all mean?

Since they began their fire-breathing rampage through everything in their path, the Red Sox have essentially doubled the offensive output of four players without seeing a major drop-off from anyone they were counting on for runs. Jay Jaffe at FanGraphs explains it all really well here, and has a nice table that shows how four guys — Willson Contreras, Andruw Monasterio, Masataka Yoshida and Caleb Durbin — have seen dramatic spikes in their wRC+ and associated power metrics since June 25.

That list doesn’t even really account for the impact of Wilyer Abreu and Ceddanne Rafaela, who have been less consistent but defensively elite with some huge hits in big spots for both. Probably the most dramatic moment of the streak (tied with Caleb Durbin’s home run) was Abreu’s impossible go-ahead two-run shot against the Tampa Bay Rays after Boston had fallen down three. Baseball is funny like that; consistency wins divisions, but at the end of the day, when you need a home run right now… someone needs to hit one right now.

In short, this team was “clutch,” a dark word in baseball given that clutch sorta doesn’t exist for teams. Well, it does, and we have clutch stats to back it up: in the last 30 days, the Boston Red Sox are by far the most clutch team (which just calculates how much win probability you add in high-leverage spots) with 4.27 Clutch (wow that sounds weird to say). That is an insane number, and more than doubles Detroit at number two.

But for the whole season, Boston has been the opposite of clutch; distinctively, un-clutch, one could say, at -1.31, which 24th in the Majors for the full season which includes this streak. And there’s no evidence that certain teams are “clutch” month over month, year over year or that clutch performances can be used as predictive for future clutch play. Jeff Sullivan wrote a great breakdown of this data in 2018, and I’ll quote from his piece here to illustrate the point:

“There’s no historical reason to believe [clutch is] a trait. It’s all just a collection of things that have happened. Things at important times that have wound up deciding ballgames.”

That is, in essence, what Boston’s 15-game win streak was about. “Things at important times” decided a number of close ballgames in a row for one team. And while it should not be used to say anything about the 2026 Boston Red Sox being a clutch team (they literally aren’t, see above), the fact that they were clutch for 30 days was the difference between the 2026 season sitting at the bottom of the Boston Harbor to rot for eternity with that tea from 1773 and becoming a buyer at the trade deadline. They brought a crane and fished the season out.

For the 2026 Red Sox, clutch does exist; maybe not as a trait, but as an event that happened and is perhaps still happening that had a seismic impact on their destiny, relationship with the city and with each other. “Things at important times” may not be something we can predict, but it still feels pretty darn awesome when they happen. Boston needed exactly that type of run (or at least something close to it) to save a season in which absolutely nothing has gone right. And they did it!

Could we have predicted it? Nope! At least not to that extent — I’ve written a lot about these Red Sox, and while they were basically always better than their putrid 32-46 record, the production they’re getting out of Durbin, Yoshida and Monasterio was not the recipe for success I had in the recipe book.

If we’re being cold and calculated, Boston will need more talent in this lineup if they’re going to oh I don’t know win the World Series or something ridiculous. Roman Anthony will need to return from the longest and most impossibly torturous Red Sox injury saga since peak Chris Sale, and Garrett Crochet will need to be back for the postseason.

Do the Red Sox believe that can happen? If they do, then buyers will be buying.

With the MLB trade deadline fast approaching and intrigue swirling everywhere around where-oh-where Tarik Skubal will go, I thought we could have a little more fun than the tried-and-true ranking of trade candidates (which I have already done) and revive one of the greatest forms our beloved sports media ever took: the mega preview.

Anyone else remember those old Sports Illustrated MLB preview issues with their 40-odd pages of info on every team, what to watch that season, cool graphics, cutouts and photos with flashy presentation and peak magazine aesthetic? It might have just been because I was 10, but I lived for this stuff.

So in my never-ending battle against those that would leave the mega preview to die alongside many other forms of written sports content, we’re bringing it back… digitally… with significantly fewer graphics… and a much smaller production staff (me)… and we can’t cover every team here because, ya know, priorities… but the energy of the mega preview will abound like Christmas cheer when Buddy the Elf starts to sing. There will be categories; there will be fun everywhere you look. After all, the mega preview is worth preserving, even in formaldehyde.

Q: Will the Detroit Tigers, who have surged since the beginning of June, actually trade Tarik Skubal?

A: I find it kind of hard to believe they won’t. The Tigers have apparently set an “outrageous” price for Skubal for interested teams, which may read like they will only trade him for an absolute heist. As they should, given the two weeks they have to induce some team to panic and trade the farm for a guy on an expiring contract. But leverage is fickle, and the Tigers may realize that come August 3, they may wind up keeping Skubal for an already-doomed run and lose him for nothing this winter. That will be a tough pill to swallow.

A: That’s an almost impossible question to answer. On one hand, you have the teams you’d expect him to probably sign with next offseason: the Los Angeles Dodgers, sure, but reports suggest the Chicago Cubs, Tampa Bay Rays and Atlanta Braves are strong candidates to go all in with Skubal. I particularly like the Braves as a landing spot, as that rotation is not as good as it looks on paper.

Q: But could he end up with [insert your favorite team]?

A: Yes, provided they are any type of contender, though there are a few teams I don’t think could or would produce a Skubal package. The San Diego Padres are not really tracking to make the postseason and are clean out of elite prospects to trade, even though they would usually be a prime suspect to go in on a big name. Nor is my favorite team (the Boston Red Sox) being run in a way that suggests they’re going to go all-in on a rental, no matter how well they’ve played pre-deadline. But you can rationalize quite a lot of teams, particularly some fringe actors who wouldn’t really expect to re-sign Skubal. Dare to dream!

The MLB trade deadline rules because every team can get involved. According to FanDuel, there are 15 entire teams with between 10-1 and 50-1 World Series odds, which may seem long but actually suggests a high level of parity… behind the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are teetering on the edge of having minus odds to win it all. But every team in that group can talk themselves into being a buyer, and every other team probably feels like a seller. So who are the splashiest participants?

1. Detroit Tigers — what the Tigers do (or do not) do will define this deadline, as whatever contender adds Skubal to their rotation will immediately vault into supercontender status. He’s that game-changing.

2. Washington Nationals — the Nationals possess two top-tier young position players: James Wood and CJ Abrams, and while I don’t think they are likely to trade Wood (I know, scintillating analysis), anything is possible with Abrams. This team has major building blocks for the future and could set themselves up well for the future with a good deadline.

3. New York Yankees — I can’t see the Yankees standing pat at this deadline with how the American League is just sitting there for them to take. They have a lot of holes in the roster, especially with their injuries.

4. Boston Red Sox — a team that was going to be one of the deadline’s biggest sellers has turned this whole thing around and now looks like a potential buyer, though it could still go either way. Relief pitching always sells like hotcakes at the deadline, and the single-best reliever on the market was Aroldis Chapman. Do the Red Sox believe enough in this utility-laden roster to hang onto a 38-year-old closer when they could get major value in return?

5. Minnesota Twins — how often do you get to run back-to-back fire sales? The Twins could really make the deadline interesting if they chose to make Byron Buxton available, and Joe Ryan could finally be heading for greener pastures after he was nearly traded last year. Those would easily be two of the biggest non-Skubal names.

6. San Francisco Giants — Rafael Devers has perhaps revived his stature as an elite hitter, but the Giants are still cooked as far as 2026 goes. They have a lot of tradable players, from Jung Hoo Lee to Luis Arraez and Matt Chapman. If the Giants have talked themselves into this Devers power spike and want to keep his gargantuan contract on the books, great. If they think instead that this is an aberration that has salvaged his trade value, they could maybe try to offload his contract much like Boston did a year ago.

A paragraph of the best trade assets you’ve never heard of (or at least haven’t thought about in a while)

Reid Detmers is not a name I had anywhere near any of my radars after he was moved the Los Angeles Angels bullpen last season for unclear reasons. I wrote a whole analysis of Detmers and why he’s considered so valuable despite his 4.39 ERA, and I think he could be a really impactful player in a better environment and could command a shockingly high price because of his age. Speaking of the bullpen, I also like Rico Garcia from the Baltimore Orioles, who has kinda just been mowing dudes down all year on a team that’s going nowhere fast. And while you may have heard of them, a pair of New York Mets pitchers in Clay Holmes (a starter) and AJ Minter (a reliever) feel like mortal locks to be dealt with how poorly this Mets season has gone.

One final perplexing player for the road

I’m curious about everything going on with Mickey Moniak and the Colorado Rockies. Here is a former number-one overall draft pick with serious pull-side power who’s 28 and has bounced around the league so much you’d think he was running from something. He’s come into his own in the mile-high air, and was seriously hot to start the season before cooling off a bit. There are red flags everywhere with Moniak, given his stats on the road pale in comparison to his Colorado numbers, but he has the bat speed and hard-hitting profile that could work for a lot of teams. But he strikes out too much, doesn’t walk enough and really only hits to one side of the field. He may not cost that much because of the risk, but could pay off big time for someone willing to take it.

Major League Baseball introduced a new innovation for the 2026 season by implementing the ABS Challenge System. The All-Star break provided an opportunity to reflect on how the Automatic ball-strike system has changed the game and overall, the reception has been positive.

It is impossible to discuss the ABS system without talking about the technology behind it. T-Mobile has played a huge role in the system. Go to a baseball game or watch one from home and you will instantly see all of the T-Mobile branding throughout the ballpark. However, it is important to point out that T-Mobile’s partnership with Major League Baseball simply isn’t branding. They are powering the technology behind the ABS system.

“We have been a partner with Major League Baseball for over a decade now and I think one of the things and the reasons it’s worked so well is we’ve kept innovating together,” T-Mobile Vice President of Sponsorships Amy Azzi said during All-Star festivities at Citizens Bank Park.

Major League Baseball began testing the ABS system back in 2022 in the minor leagues. A priority was of course that it needed to be accurate but it also had to be fast so that it wouldn’t take away from the game experience. The system is powered by Hawkeye Cameras that have been installed in every Major League park. The data is transferred over a private 5G network that is provided by T-Mobile. That leads to an almost instantaneous result.

“All of that data is transmitted into a software system that we’ve developed via the T-Mobile network,” said Morgan Sword who is the Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations at MLB. “That software system determines whether the trajectory of the ball matches with the strike zone we’ve loaded in. Then if it’s challenged, that produces a call.”

”That’s the call you see on the big board and then also on the broadcast. It’s a lot of technology that has to happen very quickly to keep that pace and rhythm going in the game.”

So far there have been over 6,000 challenges during the first half of the regular season. Teams start with two challenges each and lose one for every unsuccessful attempt. Sword said that the number of challenges was something that the league had tested in the minors and listened to feedback from fans. Two felt like the sweet spot.

“We decided on two challenges per team because that was the overwhelming fan feedback in the minor leagues that we started out at three. Fans told us that, you know, ABS challenges are great and exciting to a point. If you have games where there’s 12, 15 challenges, then it starts to feel a little like it’s disrupting the game a little bit. So we dialed it back to two and that’s produced about four challenges per game, which we think is kind of right on the money and fans have responded well to that.”

The overwhelming reaction to ABS from fans has been positive, but what about the players? Brewers’ Cy Young candidate Jacob Misiorowski talked about the ABS system at T-Mobile’s Club Magenta. Misiorowski said that he thinks that the system gives an advantage to the hitters.

“I mean, sure, yes, there’s an advantage for pitchers to get a corner call, but I think you have a bigger advantage to get a call reversed to a ball over a strike.”

While he thinks that ABS is tipped slightly in hitters favor, he is a fan of all of the technology that has made its way into baseball.

“All the technology that you’re getting, all the information that they throw up on the scoreboard, all that stuff is really cool. The tech comes back to us and we get that information and stuff like that to tweak pitches, tweak everything around it. There’s Hawkeye, stuff like that is huge.”

Phillies legends Ryan Howard and Chase Utley both agreed that they would have benefitted from having the ABS system.

“I think we both had a pretty good knowledge of the strike zone and I think that guys now, pitchers, catchers, and hitters are starting to get a better understanding of what that strike zone is,” Howard said. “We’ve seen pitches that are this far off, that are a ball, and then just a hair on, that are strikes.”

“Yeah, I think it would have helped. I think, right now, what we’re seeing is, calls are getting right,” said Utley. “At the end of the day, it’s about getting the calls correct.

While the ABS system looks like a success, Major League Baseball is currently looking for other ways that they can use technology to improve the game. They are testing a check swing system in the minors.

“It is the same Hawkeye tracking system. It actually tracks the bat, when a hitter swings. So you can finally, for the first time in the history of baseball, decide what a swing is,” Sword said. “We actually don’t really define that for anybody. So, we’ve made up a definition for the purpose of Triple-A just to see how it goes. But, we may tweak that.”

A lot of thought has gone into developing these systems and how they would impact the fan experience.

“It’s been really fun to watch it in the stadium, and I think I was telling Morgan before this, that some of the loudest moments in the stadium, you’d think someone hit a home run,” Azzi said of the ABS system.

“It’s really fun to see the impact it’s had on getting people to engage in even more. It supports the great momentum that the sport has right now.”