The Red Sox 2018 Baseball Season Is off to a Historic Start

Photo via iStock/DenisTangneyJr

The Red Sox are good.

Scratch that. The Red Sox are red hot. The Red Sox are dominant. The Red Sox are elite.

Don’t mess it up.

If you’ve stood in the same spot on the T every morning since opening day, keep throwing elbows to secure that lucky post. If you’ve worn the same pair of socks for three-weeks straight, you better leave the laundry detergent alone. If you’ve done exactly 12 jumping jacks ahead of each game, congratulations on your cardiovascular health, which will only continue improve, because you surely cannot stop now.

The universe is delicate. The universe is balanced. The universe is tilted in the Red Sox sweet, sweet favor. And we cannot disrupt the universe.

The Red Sox sit atop the American League East with a league-leading 16-2 record. Since falling to the Rays on Opening Day back on March 29, the team has lost just once, to the Yankees. It’s the first time since 2004 (an okay year for the team, if you’ll recall) that the Red Sox have gone 16-1 during any stretch of the season, according to MLB.com. The squad has swept the Marlins, Orioles, and Angels on its way to the best start in franchise history. And Thursday night’s victory in Anaheim was the team’s seventh in a row, capping off the hottest 18-game start of any Major League Team since the 1987 Brewers began the year 17-1.

Obviously, the baseball season is long, and obviously, it’s not feasible for any team (even one led by Mookie Betts and with an organist-in-residence as prolific as Josh Kantor) to regularly win 16 of 18 over the course of a 162-game season. But the 2018 Sox are in incredibly impressive company with this start. According to MLB.com, just four other teams have won at least 16 of their first 18 games of the season since the live-ball era began in 1920. Two of those four teams won the World Series. Three of the four won over 90 games.

So don’t change your morning ritual now. There’s history at stake.