What the return of Sale means for Sox's momentum

The Yankees, against whom the Red Sox got a split last weekend at Fenway Park, have been the best team in the world so far this season, everybody knows that. But in their own way -- and not always in a good way, let’s face it -- the Sox have been the most interesting team in the world so far. And they are hopeful that the real second half for them, whatever they’re going to be the rest of the way, starts on Tuesday night in St. Pete when Chris Sale finally comes back to start against the Rays.

The Red Sox started the season 11-20. They went into Monday night’s game against the Rays with the exact same record against the American League East before the Rays thumped them, 10-5.

In a season when the Yankees have been blessed with amazing good health and good fortune with their own starters, the Sox have lost everybody except Nick Pivetta from their rotation to injury at some point. Their bullpen, even with Tanner Houck and John Schreiber stepping up lately, has largely been a mess and was again on Monday night. And the Red Sox haven’t won a single series, not one, against a team from the AL East this season.

That is most of the bad news for a team that was two victories away from the World Series last October.

The good news? After that dismal start, and with that dismal record in their division, they woke up on Tuesday morning -- Sale Day for them -- with the best Wild Card record in their league.

A lot of what they’ve done since 11-20 has come against mediocre competition. They’ve still gone 36-20 over their last 56 games. Over the same time, the Yankees have been 2 1/2 games better at 38-17. And when it looked as if Boston’s team was about to bottom out again after the Yankees took the first two games of last weekend’s series at Fenway, the Red Sox came back in the late innings to win Saturday night, came back to score the last nine runs on Sunday in an 11-6 victory.

The Sox got their split despite starting Josh Winckowski, Connor Seabold and Kutter Crawford in the first three games against that powerhouse Yankee offense, and another kid, Brayan Bello, has gotten two starts, his first two in the big leagues, in the past week. But they do get Sale back on Tuesday and they get Nathan Eovaldi, who became their true ace in Sale’s absence, back for Friday night’s game against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium.

Garrett Whitlock, the talented kid who looked so great in relief last season before becoming a battlefield-commission starter this season, is expected to be healthy enough after a hip injury to go back to the bullpen in New York. The Red Sox are still hopeful that James Paxton, another Tommy John guy, might be ready to pitch in August. Michael Wacha was 6-1 with a 2.69 before going on the IL with shoulder inflammation, but is expected back sometime after the All-Star break. So, too, is Rich Hill, who was 4-4 before injuring a knee against the Cubs at Wrigley.

The team that started out 10-19 and 11-20 is not the team Alex Cora expects to have in August and September if his team can manage to stay even relatively healthy the rest of the way. Everybody knows how the Red Sox can mash with Rafael Devers and J.D. Martinez and Xander Bogaerts in the middle of Cora’s order, backed up by Alex Verdugo, who got two huge hits against the Yankees on Saturday, and Trevor Story and Christian Vázquez and now an ex-Yankee named Rob Refsnyder, who has hit like a star lately. And Cora believes, truly, that Houck and Whitlock and Schreiber can finally make the late innings something that don’t make him afraid to come out of the dugout and make a call to his bullpen.

The Sox aren’t catching this Yankee team from 14 1/2 games behind the way the old ’78 Yankees came all the way back from 14 1/2 against them. They are playing to get into the playoffs now, and maybe have the best Wild Card record, which would earn them the right to host their first postseason series at Fenway, which would only be huge for them.

It is a lot to ask, of course, after this up-and-down season. They still have six games, three apiece on the road, against the Rays and the Yankees before the break, which means that July could look a lot like April and May by Sunday night.

Here is what Cora said after he Bello gave up seven hits and five earned runs against the Rays on Monday, striking out five and walking three:

“The talent is there, we know that. …You see the potential.”

He could say the same thing about his baseball team, just past the halfway point of the season. He and fans of his team have a right to wonder what the Red Sox will look like in a month. For now, they all just want to get through the week, starting with Sale Day today.