BOSTON — The steady drone of a baseball season can manifest itself in a certain kind of banality. In order to succeed during a season in which there’s a game every day, one has to avoid emotional peaks and valleys. Any win is a good win, any loss is a tough loss; outliers are rare.

Tuesday night was an outlier at Fenway Park. Boston’s 12-10 win over the Indians was the type of game even the most circumspect players will tell you leaves a mark. The Red Sox recognized in the course of the back-and-forth affair that this could be a special win.

“This is a PlayStation game, you know?” Xander Bogaerts said. “That’s exactly what we needed. The Yankees lost today. So it was a perfect win tonight for us.”

“We haven’t had a game like this in a long time,” Manager John Farrell said.

Indeed, this is the kind of win that registers as a proverbial turning point. For a Red Sox team that plodded through July, with on-field struggles and off-field drama dominating the conversation around the club, August started, well, perfectly.

Christian Vazquez’s walk-off home run to straightaway center immediately brought to mind the similar three-run shot hit a season ago by Hanley Ramirez – the catalyst for an 11-game winning streak that put the A.L. East on ice in September.

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Four years ago to the day the Red Sox scored six in the ninth to beat the Mariners – confirming their presence as a legitimate contender for the World Series they eventually claimed.

“July?” Bogaerts said when asked about whether this could shift momentum after Boston’s worst month of the season. “I don’t know that month.”

Tuesday’s was also a game that contained more or less everything a baseball game can hold. Let’s take a look at some of the weirdest elements of a decidedly weird Red Sox win.

Chris Sale allowed four runs in all of July. He had yielded four or fewer hits in four of his five July starts. He gave up three runs on four hits in Tuesday’s first inning – matching his first-inning total in his first 21 starts.

In only five of Boston’s past 23 games entering Tuesday had the offense scored more than five runs – the number it posted in Tuesday’s second inning.

It was the first time all season the Red Sox had two different innings of four or more runs.

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All four of Craig Kimbrel’s blown saves have come on leadoff home runs. The Red Sox have come back to win three of those games.

Kimbrel’s four blown saves are twice as many as he had in 2016, even as he’s pitching significantly better.

Rafael Devers had two more hits to go along with a walk. Devers has contributed 0.6 WAR in seven games.

Christian Vazquez doesn’t hit many home runs, but he has a flair for dramatic ones. He only has four career dingers, but all of them have put the Red Sox ahead. Tuesday’s was his second to win a game in the eighth or later.

On this homestand, Vazquez is 10 for 18 with five extra-base hits. Before this homestand, Vazquez had five extra-base hits in the previous two months.

WEDNESDAY’S GAME between the Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox was postponed because of rain.

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A makeup date was set for Aug. 14 at Fenway Park, starting at 6:10 p.m.

Thunderstorms came into the area around 4 o’clock. The grounds crew never took the tarp off before the game was called more than two hours after it was supposed to begin.

Boston opens a four-game series at home against the Chicago White Sox on Thursday night.

The Associated Press contributed to this story


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