The Red Sox clinched a playoff spot on Sept. 20 by losing, 5-1, to the Rays in Tampa. Their ticket to October got punched about an hour later anyway, when the Braves beat the Astros three time zones away.
Nobody in that clubhouse watched themselves get in.
Rewind five months. Alex Cora got fired on a Saturday morning in April, with Boston sitting at 10-17. By June 24, the Red Sox were 15.5 games back in the AL East, with playoff odds cratered to 8.4%. That’s about as buried as a team gets in June.
Chad Tracy took over that wreckage on April 26 with zero big-league managing experience. Since then, Boston has gone 74-55 under him, a .573 winning percentage that would put most division leaders to shame. From July 27 through the end of the regular season, they played at a .609 clip, 28-18 down the stretch. They’re the first team in MLB history to lose 46 of their first 78 games and still finish above .500. Not one hot month. The roster Tracy built out of the wreckage. It’s the exact arc Central Maine tracked: a dreadful start, then a red-hot summer.
That’s the case for the permanent job. Not vibes. Receipts.
Beat writer Tyler Milliken called it one of the most improbable summers in baseball history, and he’s not exaggerating. A team that lost its manager in a firing nobody saw coming turned around and finished with the second-best road winning percentage in the American League.
This tweet nails how Saturday actually felt in that clubhouse:
Anticlimactic clinch, but to be on pace to go down as one of the worst Red Sox teams ever, then lock in, ignore the noise, and go on a generational run that led to postseason baseball…that’s both incredibly impressive and very much worth celebrating. See you in the Bronx. pic.twitter.com/ETJ7MEnHsj
— Jared Carrabis (@Jared_Carrabis) September 20, 2026
Anticlimactic, sure. You don’t draw up “clinch while getting shut down by Tampa’s bullpen” as the moment. But in a 162-game season, sometimes the celebration starts because of somebody else’s scoreboard, and you find out standing at your locker.
Plenty of the beat corps agrees on where the conversation goes next.
The Red Sox were 10-17 when Chad Tracy took over. A first time manager with no big league experience. He walked into a clubhouse of players that just lost a well-liked and respected manager.
Things weren’t fixed instantly, but they didn’t need to be. They got there in the end,… pic.twitter.com/etkqeb1PUe
— Gordo (@BOSSportsGordo) September 20, 2026
Gordo’s calling for a Manager of the Year case, and he’s not wrong to. Tracy walked into a room that had just lost a manager players actually liked, and he didn’t need some big culture-reset speech to fix it. He kept writing lineups, put Roman Anthony in the leadoff spot down the stretch, and let a talented roster figure itself out.
None of this happened by accident. firebrandal.com made the case for Tracy back in July, and it’s only gotten stronger since, even with the rotation health questions that never fully disappeared. Mickey Gasper’s hot stretch since his recall was part of the same story, a roster that kept finding useful players in June, July and August while the rest of the sport had already buried them.
Mike Mutnansky put it best: when the Red Sox fired Cora on a Saturday morning in April, nobody thought this team would sniff October. Now they’re one of 12 clubs still alive for a title. They’ll open as the No. 2 wild card, likely on the road against the Yankees, so nobody’s handing them anything in the Bronx.
Doesn’t matter how they get in. Tracy got them here. Give the guy the job.
