The Boston Red Sox have won 15 games in a row, equalling the longest winning streak in the franchise's history, ESPN reports. They beat the Baltimore Orioles 6-3 on Wednesday in the first game of a split doubleheader.
The record they matched
The number carries real historical weight for the club.
According to ESPN, the 15-game streak matches the mark set by the 1946 Red Sox, the American League champion team led by Ted Williams, one of the greatest hitters in the sport's history. A record that has stood for 80 years, set by a pennant-winning team built around a legend, is not a trivial thing to equal, and it places the current side, at least by this measure, in the best company the franchise has.
How they won this one
The win itself was a team effort rather than a one-man show.
ESPN reports that Jarren Duran drove in runs with a two-run triple and a sacrifice fly; Caleb Durbin hit a two-run single, having also hit the go-ahead home run in the 14th straight win two days earlier; and Ceddanne Rafaela homered over the Green Monster, Fenway Park's famous left-field wall. On the mound, Jake Bennett pitched five and two-thirds innings, allowing three runs on nine hits, and the veteran Aroldis Chapman closed it out for his 23rd save of the season and the 390th of his career, which ESPN notes ties him with Dennis Eckersley for ninth on the all-time list.
There was also a moment that could have gone very differently. ESPN reports that Bennett was struck on the stomach by a line drive measured at 102.8 mph but, after being checked by team staff, stayed in the game.
Why a streak like this matters
A winning streak is more than the sum of its games, which is why they capture attention beyond a team's own fans.
Fifteen consecutive wins requires not just talent but the avoidance of the ordinary bad days that every long baseball season contains, over a stretch of more than two weeks. Baseball is a sport built on the assumption that even good teams lose regularly; a streak this long is the temporary suspension of that rule, and matching a mark set 80 years earlier ties the present team to the history of the club in a way a single good game never could.
The immediate question is whether the current Red Sox can now do what the 1946 team could not extend beyond, and win a 16th to stand alone atop their own record book. That chance comes next. For now, they have drawn level with one of the most storied teams in their past.
