And so, naturally, with Sunday’s 4-3 Athletics win in the rubber match of a three-game weekend series, both streaks ended. The coldest team in baseball beat the hottest in two out of three games, an outcome that is so intrinsic to baseball that it barely registered as a surprise to the Sox.
“Baseball is like that,” shrugged Sox closer Aroldis Chapman, who surrendered the winning run in the ninth inning.
Indeed. Sunday’s game offered a reminder of the narrow margin between wins and losses, which in turn underscores just how improbable the Red Sox’ summer rampage has been.
Consider two batted balls.
In the top of the eighth inning, the Sox held a 3-2 lead with setup man Garrett Whitlock on the mound. Boston’s bullpen had been nearly perfect in turning leads into wins during the team’s absurd 27-4 stretch entering Sunday, blowing just one save and not getting charged with a single loss.
But with two outs and a man on second, Jonah Heim lined an up-and-away fastball to left. The ball had an exit velocity of 90.5 miles per hour and expected batting average of .340.
As Jarren Duran sprinted toward it, a capricious zephyr amplified, steering the ball deeper on the track in defiance of the left fielder’s route. The ball sailed just over Duran’s leap and kissed the track at the base of the outfield wall for a game-tying double. Moments later, the flags drooped as the wind subsided.
“[Duran] came up to me and was like, ‘I’m sorry. I should have had that,’” relayed Whitlock. “I was like, ‘What are you talking about? I didn’t think there was any chance you were going to get to that.’”
By contrast, with two outs and both the potential tying and go-ahead runs on base in the bottom of the ninth, Ceddanne Rafaela drilled a curveball from Athletics closer Hogan Harris to left — 101.8 m.p.h. off the bat, with an expected batting average of .400.
As with Heim’s liner the prior inning, the ball seemed to take off — but left fielder Jeff McNeil leapt just high enough have the ball stick in the top of his glove’s webbing for the final out of the game.
And just like that: Poof. The Sox’ nine-series winning streak was snapped. In some ways, the way it concluded underscored the magic of what had occurred during it.
“You can realize how razor thin the margins are — just one swing, one pitch that gets hit in a spot,” reflected Sox interim manager Chad Tracy. “It speaks to the difficulty of winning that many series in a row because it can be one swing of the bat, one pitch at any game that can swing at the other team’s favor. So, it happens. It hasn’t happened much, but it happened today. That’s the way it goes.”
Perhaps above all else, the Red Sox’ 2026 season has served as a lesson to take nothing for granted — that teams are capable of dramatically overperforming and underperforming expectations, sometimes all in the span of a few weeks. The difference between those states — the ability to soar rather than wallow in muck — reflects at times on skill and execution, but also frequently points to chance.
On Sunday, the wind turned against the Sox (64-53), resulting in a one-run loss to the A’s (47-71), who possess the third-worst record in baseball. The Sox have endured back-to-back losses for the first time since June 30-July 1. They were not alarmed.
“It’s been a minute,” Tracy said of the team’s first back-to-back losses in six weeks. “When the [15-game] winning streak ended, I was like, ‘We knew that was going to happen eventually,’ and I think in this case you probably knew this was going to happen eventually. You’re not going to win every single series the rest of the year. … You move on, tip your cap and move on to Toronto.”
The Red Sox start a four-game series in Rogers Centre on Monday. With precipitation in the forecast, the roof might be closed — in which case the whims of the wind will be absent.
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.