“Here we go. It’s our stage.”
– Red Sox Manager Alex Cora after the Boston Bruins lost in the Stanley Cup finals

Yes, it is.

For the next couple of months, the Red Sox are the only game in town. The only team playing. While many of us were distracted by the Bruins run to the final game of the NHL season, the Red Sox were struggling to play .500 ball.

The Boston Red Sox have a 16-23 record this season against teams with winning records. “We’re not caught up in that. We’ve just got to go there and play well,” says manager Alex Cora. Nick Wass/Associated Press

It’s been a wildly inconsistent spring for the defending champs. They have shown stretches where they begin to look like the team that won it all last year, only to lose an important series to a contender.

And now, just as everyone turns their attention to the Red Sox, the team is on a roll again. Heading into a three-game series at Minnesota, they had won five straight games and moved five games above .500 for the first time all season. Despite all their early struggles, the Red Sox are very much in the American League East race. Boston began the work week just 5 1/2 games out of first with more than half of the season to go.

The Red Sox are 28-17 since their woeful 11-17 start. They have the best record in the AL East since April 28. Their 77 homers since the end of April are the second most in the major leagues. Yet fans are still uneasy about this team.

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Why? Because – as of Sunday – the Red Sox are 23-11 against teams with losing records, and 16-23 against teams with winning records. They’ve scored 6.9 runs per game against the sub-.500 teams and just 4.1 runs a game against the better competition. Every time fans start to buy into this team, Boston runs into a team like Houston or New York or Tampa Bay and stumbles.

That’s why this series with the Minnesota Twins is so important. First-year manager Rocco Baldelli has the Twins playing well – they began the week with the largest division lead of any team in the American League. It is yet another test for the Red Sox after they warmed up by sweeping arguably the worst team in baseball. It was reminiscent of 10 days earlier when they swept the Royals in Kansas City, only to lost three of four to the Rays at Fenway Park.

Yet Cora doesn’t see it that way. He looks at the team’s overall record, the fact that they’re currently holding onto a playoff spot, and believes the Red Sox just need to continue building on their solid play of late.

“I think a lot of people see that as important, playing against those guys,” Cora said of his team’s fortunes against better teams. “I feel like we played well (against them). We just didn’t get the clutch hit. It’s a hit here, a hit there, a pitch here. So we’re not caught up in that. We’ve just got to go there and play well.”

They have done that against the bad teams. Now they need to show they can compete with the best. After all, that’s who they’ll be facing in October. The good news is that October baseball looks a lot more likely now than it did back in April.

Tom Caron is a studio host for the Red Sox broadcast on NESN. His column appears in the Portland Press Herald on Tuesdays.


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