The Red Sox's Wild Season Defies Coherent Narrative Explanation
Source: Louisa Thomas. "The Red Sox Cannot Be Made to Make Any Sense | The New Yorker." August 16, 2026. www.newyorker.com
The Gist
The Red Sox had a baseball season that makes no sense—they went from one of the worst teams in the league to one of the best, then back to losing again. The author argues that all the explanations people will invent for this (new coaches, lucky charms, team drama) probably don't really explain anything; the team's overall record most likely just reflects that they were an average team all along, with lots of random luck making them look worse or better than they really were at different points.
Conclusion
The 2026 Red Sox season cannot be made to make rational sense; despite post-hoc explanations offered for the team's extreme swings between terrible and excellent play, no causal story fully accounts for their volatility, and their overall season record—not any particular streak—likely reveals who they truly are.
Premises
- The team went from 15.5 games behind first place with a putrid record in June to being called one of the best teams in baseball after a 15-game and then 9-game winning streak in July
- This dramatic turnaround occurred despite losing key players to injury (ace Garrett Crochet, top young hitter Roman Anthony) and firing the manager mid-season
- After being labeled a top team, the Red Sox immediately lost 5 of their next games, including sweeps by lesser teams
- Statistical models (expected wins based on runs scored versus allowed) suggest the team was always closer to a .500 team than either their early bad record or their hot streak indicated
- Post-season narratives (hitting coaches, hype videos, clubhouse arguments, lucky cleats) will likely be constructed to explain the season, but these explanations are largely arbitrary attempts to impose order on statistical noise
- The team's current season-long record projects to roughly the same win total (87-88 games) that preseason analytical models predicted, suggesting the extreme streaks were statistical noise around a stable true talent level
Assumptions
- A team's 'true' quality is best reflected in its aggregate, long-season statistical performance rather than in any short-term streak
- Human tendency to construct causal narratives for random or luck-driven events (like winning/losing streaks) is often misleading or unjustified
- Baseball outcomes over short stretches are substantially influenced by luck/variance rather than being fully explained by skill or team execution
- Fans' emotional investment in narrative (comebacks, heroism) is valid and worthwhile even if statistically it doesn't reflect the 'more accurate' explanation