In 1906, the Chicago Cubs won 116 games against just 36 losses, becoming the only MLB team ever to win at least three-quarters of its games. Nearly 100 years later, in 2001, the Seattle Mariners equaled the Cubs’ win total but (because of the 162-game schedule) also posted 10 more losses. With their own loss last night, the 81-35 Boston Red Sox are currently on pace for 113 wins. While that total would not be a record, it would still represent the fourth-highest total in history — behind the aforementioned Cubs and Mariners in addition to the 1998 Yankees — and puts them within striking distance of the record.

In order to tie the record, Boston would need to finish the season on a 35-11 tear, a .761 winning percentage. That is, admittedly, a long shot. Consider, for context, that the Red Sox started the season by winning 17 of their first 20 games and still didn’t win their 35th of the year until after they had put up 16 losses. From May 24 through July 12, the team went 32-14 and, in an overlapping stretch from June 14 through Wednesday’s 10-5 win over the Blue Jays, the team went 34-12. In fact, backing up the recent run to June 11, the club went 37-12, a .755 winning percentage nearly identical to how they would need to finish the season and tie the win record.

While the Red Sox are incredibly talented, our projections don’t quite see a record as a realistic possibility, pegging Boston for a 108-win season. By going to our win-distribution graphs, we can get a better understanding of the team’s odds. What we see below are the win distributions for the AL East.

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When the Boston Red Sox acquired Nathan Eovaldi from the Tampa Bay Rays prior to last month’s trade deadline, they brought on board a righty who no longer relies almost exclusively on velocity. Eovaldi still throws heat — his four-seamer averages a tick over 97 mph and approaches 100 — but another pitch has become every bit as important to his arsenal. The 28-year-old flamethrower is relying heavily on a cutter, and it didn’t come out of nowhere. He essentially took it out of his back pocket.

The fact that he’s thrown a cut fastball over 30% of the time this season is less surprising if you know the story behind it. Eovaldi, who goes into tonight’s start against the Baltimore Orioles with a 3.38 ERA and an 18-inning scoreless streak, shared that story prior to a recent game.

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Nathan Eovaldi: “The first time I actually started throwing a cutter was in 2012, when I was with the Dodgers. I was getting hit around a lot, and it became one of those times where you’re like, ‘Alright, let’s try messing around with a couple different pitches.’ My pitching coach, Rick Honeycutt, suggested a cut fastball. He showed me the grip, I threw it, and it cut.

“Pitches that are similar to my fastball — I don’t have to do a lot to them — are just a little easier for me to throw. I have confidence with my cutter. I’m throwing it hard, so even if I miss, it’s still going to be like a hard fastball. Do you know what I mean? My velocity kicks in. Right now there’s about four or five mph [of separation] from my four-seamer, so it’s still a hard enough pitch. It’s not like if I throw a changeup and it’s 86-88, hovering up there like a BP fastball.

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Rick Porcello has a plus curveball. That wasn’t always the case. He could really snap one off in his amateur days, but then something strange happened. Shortly after signing with the Detroit Tigers, who drafted him 27th overall in 2007 out of a New Jersey high school, Porcello found that the pitch had gone missing.

When I talked to the 29-year-old Red Sox right-hander recently, the plan was to include him in my ongoing Player’s View: Learning and Developing a Pitch series. As it turns out, the story behind his hook merits a longer look than can be folded into three or four paragraphs. A tale of disappearance and recovery is not only compelling, it takes time to tell.

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Rick Porcello: “When I was a teenager I had a really good curveball. It was something that came naturally to me. Then, when I got into pro ball, I didn’t have a good one in my first start, and I didn’t have a good one in my second start. It turned into this thing where it wasn’t there all year. I completely lost it. But I did have a really good sinker and a really good changeup, so I was fortunate enough to make the big-league team the next year.

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A three-homer game by Steve Pearce, a pair of stifling pitching performances by Rick Porcello — an 86-pitch complete game, the fewest needed for a nine-inning outing since 2014 — and Nathan Eovaldi, and an after-midnight comeback from a 4-1 deficit. With that, the race for the American League East flag is all over but the shouting. At Fenway Park this weekend, a banged-up Red Sox squad swept four straight against a banged-up Yankees squad, widening their division lead to 9.5 games, their largest margin since 2013.

At 79-34 (.699), the Red Sox are on a 113-win pace. Even if they go 24-25 the rest of the way, they would surpass the 1978 team’s win total of 99 — still a Bucky Dent homer short of what they needed — for the franchise’s highest win total in the post-1960 expansion era, and they have a good chance of surpassing the highest winning percentages of their pre-expansion forebears:

A recently as July 1, when they were fresh off losing two out of three in the Bronx, Boston (then 56-29) was in a virtual tie with their pinstriped foes (54-27) for at the AL East lead; the two teams owned the top two records in all of baseball. Since then, the Red Sox have gone 22-6, the Yankees just 15-14. A picture is worth a thousand words:

To be fair, the Red Sox have played the cushier schedule of the two teams since that point, with their three-game series against the Nationals from July 2-4 their only games against a team with a winning record until their July 30-31 pair with the Phillies. In between, they played the Royals, Rangers, Blue Jays, Tigers, Orioles and Twins – six of the seven worst teams in the league, a combined 144 games below .500 through Sunday — with a two-game split in Baltimore the only time they failed to win a series.

While they were luxuriating on that pillow-soft slate, the Yankees faced the Braves, Indians and Rays, and won just the first of those series; they also split six games with the Orioles and two with the Mets. That’s a tough way to catch up under the best of circumstances.

Neither lineup has been whole in this span. The Red Sox have been without Dustin Pedroia for all but three games this season in the aftermath of an experimental cartilage restoration procedure in his left knee, and Eduardo Núñez has been so bad that he (and Brock Holt) topped the second base list in my Replacement-Level Killers series. The catching tandem of Christian Vazquez and Sandy Leon also earned a spot among the Killers even before Vazquez suffered a fractured right pinky that required surgery. Likewise for third baseman Rafael Devers, who first missed time due to left shoulder inflammation and then went back on the DL in late July due to a left hamstring strain. Even Ian Kinsler, who was acquired from the Angels on July 30 in order to shore up the keystone, got in on the injury racket by straining his hamstring in his third game for the Sox. Boston also lost starter Eduardo Rodríguez to an ankle sprain just before the All-Star break, and has been without Chris Sale since July 27 due to shoulder inflammation.

On the other side, the Yankees began this stretch without catcher Gary Sanchez, who has been scuffling for most of the season. After being sidelined from June 25 until July 20 with a groin strain, he played in just two games before reinjuring himself, but not before a dumb, only-in-New-York controversy involving his apparent lack of effort in chasing down a passed ball (the point at which he apparently re-aggravated the groin) and then grounding into a game ending force out. Second baseman Gleyber Torres suffered a right hip strain on July 4, sidelining him for three weeks, and then, most devastatingly, Aaron Judge suffered a chip fracture in his right wrist when he was hit by a Jakob Junis pitch on July 26.

Masahiro Tanaka missed a month due to bilateral hamstring strains from running the bases during an interleague game; he returned on July 10. On top of all this, J.A. Happ, whom the Yankees acquired from the Blue Jays on July 26 with an eye towards his career-long success in Fenway Park, missed this weekend’s series because, like the Mets’ Noah Syndergaard, he came down with a case of hand, foot and mouth disease. Chance Adams, who was recalled from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to make his major league debut in his stead, gave the Yankees a five-inning, three-run performance that simply wasn’t enough opposite Eovaldi’s eight shutout innings.

Judge has been the Yankees’ most productive hitter all season, hitting .285/.398/.548 for a 157 wRC+, good for the fifth highest wRC+ in the league. From July 2 until he went down, he was humming along at a similar clip, but remarkably, four Sox hitters have been even hotter in that span:

The Yankees have gotten average-or-better production at every position besides catcher and first base during that span — and it just hasn’t been enough to keep up with the Sox. Pearce, acquired from the Blue Jays for High-A infielder Santiago Espinal on June 28, has clubbed five homers in just 71 PA since the trade, tied with Betts for second on the team behind Martinez’s eight. In other words, he’s even hotter than the players who have ranked second and third in the league in wRC+ overall this year. Those scorching performances have helped to offset the replacement-level ones at second base and catcher, though of course it was Leon’s 10th inning single off Jonathan Holder — just his fourth hit in 34 at-bats since the All-Star break — that turned into the winning run on Sunday night. Everything’s coming up Milhouse.

While there’s been only a slight separation between the two teams on the offensive side, the separation has been massive as far as the rotations go:

Sixty-four percent of the innings thrown by Yankees starters in this span have gone to pitchers hit for ERAs well above 5.00. Most glaringly, Severino has failed to last six innings in any of his last five starts while allowing eight home runs, likely ending his Cy Young hopes. Sabathia has apparently run out of gas, and Gray, an enigma since being acquired from the A’s at the 2017 non-waiver deadline, has pitched his way to the bullpen; his next turn will be taken by July 31 acquisition Lance Lynn.

On the other side, both Sale and Rodriguez were stellar within this stretch before landing on the DL, and Eovaldi picked an outstanding moment in which to put together back-to-back scoreless starts for the first time in his career. As a group, the Sox starters have a home run rate that’s half that of the Yankees (0.9 per nine versus 1.8) while striking out more (9.6 per nine to 8.6) and walking fewer (2.4 per nine to 3.4). Good morning, good afternoon, good night.

I’ll spare you the bullpen table, but where it had tilted towards the Yankees prior to this series (a 3.13 ERA/3.32 FIP ERA versus a 3.87 ERA/3.42 FIP),
it’s now tilted towards the Sox, thanks to the work they did this weekend: 3.79 ERA/3.57 FIP to 4.08 ERA/3.50 FIP. Much of the damage on the pinstriped front owes to Thursday night’s debacle, when manager Aaron Boone pulled Sabathia after three innings and two runs allowed, then sat on his hands as Holder, who entered the night with a 2.06 ERA and 2.52 FIP, allowed seven straight batters to reach base, serving up four extra-base hits including one of Pearce’s homers. Boone then called upon Chad Green, who retired just two of the five hitters he faced. By the time the dust had settled, a 4-2 lead had turned into a 10-4 deficit, and that was before Cessa, who had retired Pearce with runners on the corners to end the frame, allowed five garbage-time runs in his next three innings. As for Sunday, while Aroldis Chapman has looked wobbly lately due to left knee tendinitis, with a 6.10 ERA and eight walks (but 22 strikeouts) in 10.1 innings dating back to June 25, it was only his second blown save of the season.

Both Boston’s Dave Dombrowski and New York’s Brian Cashman were active in the days and weeks leading up to the July 31 deadline, with the former adding Pearce, Kinsler and Eovaldi and the latter Zach Britton, Happ and Lynn. Playoff odds-wise, none of what they did had much effect because the two teams are so far ahead of the pack; per Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, the Yankees’ moves added about one percentage point to their chances of winning the division at the expense of the Red Sox, but those chances are now less than a third of what they were less than a week later because of the Boston trouncing.

It’s not that the Yankees are a bad team — they’re still projected to win 99 games this year. But right now, 99 wins in the AL East gets you a set of steak knives and a date with either the A’s or the Mariners in the Coin Toss Game. This Red Sox team has gotten hot at the right time, and they’ve left the Yankees eating their dust.

With a record of 67-37, the Yankees have been the second-best team in all of baseball. And yet those same Yankees are likely to have to survive a one-game wild-card playoff, because for as good as they’ve been, the Red Sox are six games better in the standings. They’re on pace to win either 112 or 113 games, depending on how you round your decimals, and yet even that good of a team can still have the occasional weakness. For example! Dustin Pedroia has been unable to get all the way healthy. Second base, then, has mostly belonged to Eduardo Nunez and Brock Holt, and together they have been bad. The Red Sox have gotten a below-replacement performance from the keystone, so it’s an area they thought about improving.

You may consider the position improved. The Sox have moved to pick up a rental.

Red Sox get:

• Ian Kinsler

Angels get:

• Ty Buttrey
• Williams Jerez

There is some money changing hands, but it doesn’t do much to change the equation. The Red Sox are almost certain to exceed the highest competitive-balance-tax threshold of $237 million, which comes with financial and draft-related penalties, but they don’t seem to mind, provided the team can get better. Kinsler makes the team better, even if only a little bit. The Red Sox were already so strong.

Given that Kinsler is 36 years old, he’s past the best offensive days of his career. He’s been hotter lately, shaking off an early slump, and even the overall reduced version of Kinsler now seems like more of a threat than Nunez. More importantly, whether you go by Defensive Runs Saved or Ultimate Zone Rating, Kinsler ranks as the second-best defensive second baseman. He has a long track record of being an outstanding defender, and you certainly couldn’t say that for Nunez. Kinsler is also better in that regard than Holt, so even if the bat is diminished, Kinsler is going to take hits away. Value is value, however it comes.

This has the additional effect of freeing up Nunez and/or Holt to play more third base, with Rafael Devers on the disabled list. Devers, you’d think, would be all the way back well in advance of the playoffs, but there are still games to win today. There are still the Yankees to try to fend off. This gets more complicated if Pedroia starts to feel markedly better, but I don’t think anyone’s counting on that.

For the Angels, it hurts to say goodbye, because Kinsler was a part of what they thought would be a good thing. But it’s long been evident this season wasn’t going to work out, so at least the front office isn’t coming away empty-handed. Both Buttrey and Jerez are relievers — Buttrey 25, and Jerez 26. Buttrey seems like the better of the two, but they’ve both been pitching in Triple-A, with fair amounts of success. There have been 276 Triple-A pitchers with at least 40 innings. Buttrey ranks fifth in strikeout rate, while Jerez checks in at 20th. Buttrey, also, ranks fifth in K-BB%. He pitches off of a huge fastball, and this season his strikeouts have surged while his walks have gone down.

It’s funny — the Red Sox have talked about needing bullpen help, and Buttrey might’ve been able to be that guy. But now he’ll join the Angels instead, and it shouldn’t be long before both these guys get major-league looks. Neither is a lock to really do anything, but as the Angels look ahead to a hopefully more competitive 2019, these could be a couple of bullpen solutions. Kinsler’s contract is up in some months.

This is how rental trades usually work. The Angels just decided to go for high-minors relievers instead of low-minors starters. And so now we’ll see if the Red Sox fill the bullpen slot Buttrey didn’t get a chance to take. Heaven knows there are plenty of relievers available.

There are only 24-ish hours remaining until baseball’s trade deadline and, truth is, I’m a bit impatient. Until free agency opens up in about a hundred days or thereabouts, this is truly our last great opportunity to let our imaginations run wild. Sure, we can conjure up some fun trades in August, but our whimsical mind-meanderings just aren’t as exciting when all of the players we trade have to go through imaginary revocable waivers.

Against my worse judgment, to which I typically cater, I endeavored to make my last-minute deadline trades to retain at least a whiff of plausibility. So, no blockbuster Mike Trout deal, no winning Noah Syndergaard in a game of canasta, and no Rockies realizing that they have significant other needs other than the bullpen.

Bryce Harper to the Yankees

Washington’s playoff hopes have sunk to the extent that, even if you’re as optimistic as the FanGraphs depth charts are and believe the Phillies and Braves are truly sub-.500 teams as presently constructed, the Nats still only are a one-in-three shot to win the division. If you’re sunnier on Philadelphia or Atlanta, those Nats probabilities lose decimal places surprisingly quickly.

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Just last week, Kiley McDaniel finished up this year’s Trade Value series. The Trade Value series represents an attempt to rank all the best assets in baseball while accounting for player skill, age, and contract status all simultaneously. One player who didn’t appear in the series was Cardinals infielder Matt Carpenter, not even in the Honorable Mention section.

At that time, Carpenter was having a fine season, having recorded a 142 wRC+ and 3.2 WAR in 378 plate appearances. However, at 32 years old and with two-and-a-half seasons of control remaining on salaries of $14.5 million in 2019 and $18.5 million ($2 million buyout) in 2020, McDaniel reasonably left Carpenter off the list.

In his first eight games after the All-Star Break, however, Carpenter added 1.1 WAR to his season total, hitting .400/.500/1.100 with a 307 wRC+ during that stretch. His WAR was 21st in baseball at the end of the first half, but now it ranks seventh in the sport and first in the National League. His .275/.384/.579 batting line is good for a 155 wRC+, which is second in the NL and eighth in baseball, just ahead of Jesus Aguilar and Manny Machado. His season totals are even more amazing when you consider that on May 15, Carpenter was hitting .140/.286/.272 with a 59 wRC+. Jay Jaffe already detailed Carpenter’s turnaround at the end of June when he was just doing really well.

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Here are my very brief thoughts on Jalen Beeks, who was acquired by Tampa Bay from Boston in exchange for Nathan Eovaldi:

Beeks was ranked 6th in a bad Red Sox system entering the year and received a 45 FV grade from us as we thought he had passable control and a deep enough pitch mix to start. He proceeded to dominate the International League and had accumulated 117 strikeouts in 87.1 innings at the time of the trade.

We still have a 45 FV on Beeks, who has a fringe fastball in the 89-93-mph range, an above-average curveball, and an average changeup and cutter. Finding some way for the fastball to play is of paramount importance to Beeks’ ability to start, and it’s probably going to take heavier in-zone use of his curveball to keep hitters from sitting on a relatively hittable fastball. Tampa Bay’s pitchers have used their fastballs less than all other big leagues teams aside from the Yankees, so this seems likely to occur. Beeks projects as a No. 4 or No. 5 starter, and because we’re talking about a lefty with a good breaking ball, his injury-independent floor is that of a good bullpen piece.

You could argue this was Boston’s best realistic trade chip as none of the other 45 FV prospects in the org have really performed this year, and 50 FV prospects Michael Chavis (PED suspension) and Jay Groome (Tommy John) have other issues impacting their value.

The Astros have it relatively easy: They’re a super-team lacking meaningful divisional competition. The Indians have it even easier: They should resemble a super-team as well, playing in one of the very worst divisions in modern baseball history. This isn’t what it’s like for the Yankees or the Red Sox. While both teams are almost certainly going to the playoffs, one of them will have to survive the wild-card game, which brings an abrupt end to one competitive team’s season. Even though either team would be favored in this year’s matchup, neither is excited by the prospect, so they’re working to try to finish in first. Late Tuesday, the Yankees got better by fetching help in the bullpen. Early Wednesday, the Red Sox responded by fetching help in the rotation.

Red Sox get:

• Nathan Eovaldi

Rays get:

• Jalen Beeks

It’s a clean trade — a one-for-one between a team in the hunt and a team watching it from the outside. In general, it looks how these trades usually look. The good team is getting a veteran rental, and the worse team is getting a longer-term prospect. Indeed, you could say this is a normal trade for the teams to make. But even normal trades are interesting! And for both sides, this is a bet on the numbers. It’s a bet on the new Eovaldi, and on the new Beeks. Both have been pitchers in transition.

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Who trades players at 10 AM? The Red Sox, apparently, is who. That’s what they’ve done today, at least, picking up right-hander Nathan Eovaldi from the Tampa Bay Rays in exchange for minor-league pitcher Jalen Beeks.

Trading Eovaldi represents the successful culmination of a two-year strategy for the Rays, who signed him to a one-year, $2 million contract for a 2017 he was going to miss due to Tommy John surgery. A one-year option for $2 million gave the Rays a chance to get some serious upside in value for their patience, $4 million representing basically ashtray money when it comes to signing major-league-competent starting pitchers.

Eovaldi’s always been a bit of a puzzle, a pitcher who possessed a fastball that touched 100 mph but lacked the key to closing the deal and punching out batters, his breaking pitches never effectively complementing his velocity. Relying heavily on a cutter this year, however, Eovaldi has produced the highest strikeout rate of his career to date (23.7%). Eovaldi had fooled around with the pitch before, but this is the first time he’s had real success with the pitch, FanGraphs’ linear-weighted measure of pitch value gives him the 10th-most valuable cutter in baseball this season, ninth on a rate basic for pitchers with a minimum of 50 innings.

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