BOSTON -- As flashes of spectacular lightning hovered above and a steady rain fell from the dark sky, the Red Sox pushed what has been a highly satisfying season to date to the halfway point with more excitement on Wednesday night at Fenway Park.

On the strength of a 6-2 victory, the Sox are an American League-best 50-31. Yes, that puts them on pace for 100 wins.

As longtime Red Sox radio announcer Joe Castiglione would say, “Can you believe it?”

This is the 15th time the Red Sox have won at least 50 of their first 81 games. They won the World Series the last two times they did so -- in 2007 and ’18.

“Our expectations are to win the World Series, and we’re not even close,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “We had a great first half, and we played well for a while. If you put everything in perspective this month, we didn’t play well and we won 18 games. That’s how good we are. We can get away with mistakes, but we hate making mistakes. We have to clean that up and keep getting better.”

Aside from the rain delays -- two of them, totaling two hours and 21 minutes -- the good times continued to roll at Fenway on Wednesday as Cora’s team put together the type of performance that has become commonplace while running its winning streak to six games.

At one moment, J.D. Martinez crushed a three-run homer to center.

At another, Kiké Hernández raced into the gap in right-center, slid on the wet warning track and made a spectacular catch to take extra bases from Hanser Alberto. Per Statcast, he had a catch probability of 35 percent on the play and covered 108 feet in 5.4 seconds.

Then there was Martín Pérez, giving the Red Sox the type of strong pitching performance they got many times earlier in the season but have lacked of late. The lefty (6-4, 4.04 ERA) went 5 1/3 innings, allowing two runs on seven hits.

“The first five innings, everything was good,” said Pérez. “The last inning, I couldn’t throw strikes because of too much [rain], but I think it was a great game to win, so that's important.”

And finally, there was the bullpen, so stellar all month and getting the job done again, with four relievers combining for 3 2/3 scoreless innings.

“They all have been great,” said Cora. “The bullpen has been amazing. That pitch by [Brandon Workman] to get out of the [sixth] inning was huge for this game. We just have to keep praising these guys because they’ve been amazing. They’ve been so good.”

After a tough 1-0 loss to the Rays on Thursday at Tropicana Field that ended on a walk-off wild pitch by Matt Barnes, Cora laughed off the suggestion that the loss was “devastating.” Then he added, “It’s going to be a fun summer in Boston.”

The Red Sox haven’t lost since.

“So far it’s been an outstanding homestand,” said Cora. “We came from a road trip when we lost the series in Kansas City and played that game in [St. Petersburg] and a lot of people thought that [loss] was devastating. You have to tip your hat to the guys.”

The Red Sox will try to sweep the homestand on Thursday afternoon against the Royals before heading west for three games in Oakland and three in Anaheim.

“We've been competing this first half,” said Pérez. “We’ve been doing a great job, pitchers and position players. We put everything together to win. We just need to continue to play well and keep winning games.”