Boston Red Sox too hot to handle…even in frigid temperatures

Watch out Major League Baseball, the Boston Red Sox are playing baseball the way it should be played and winning by any means necessary.

On Tuesday, the red-hot Sox extended their winning streak to seven games with a 4-2 victory over the Minnesota Twins at Target Field with snow falling and all.

Veteran starter Martin Perez continued the trend of solid starting pitching, while Rafael Devers continued to rip the cover off the ball with yet another home run.  But the trend that continued for the Red Sox in Tuesday’s game was the type situational baseball Alex Cora has re-installed in this team.

Boston Red Sox getting it down in every way possible

It wasn’t the top of the batting order that got things going on this snowy afternoon, it was the bottom of the order that did most of the damage, including promising rookie Bobby Dalbec who has shown in the last couple of games that he is more than a swinging for the fences kind of guy.

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In fact, Dalbec looked very much like J.D. Martinez in producing a couple of RBI doubles that helped his team when the game.  He simply took what was there at the plate, especially on a day where the weather was making things difficult.

"“That was tough today, but the guys were talking and actually [they said] the conditions felt better than the first few games at home,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said following the game, via MLB.com.  “It didn’t feel that way [to me], I don’t know what they were talking about.  But you have to trust them, right?”"

At the end of the day, it really didn’t matter for a team as hot as the Boston Red Sox.  During their seven-game winning streak, they have won in many different ways, including a few comeback victories that have sold Red Sox Nation on the fun identity of this 2021 version of the squad.

With not real super starts (hard not to call Martinez, Devers and Xander Bogarts superstars), this collection of players appears poised to prove the critics wrong, including their own fans who checked out after the team started the season at 0-3.

But here they stand at 7-3 and atop of the AL East with players contributing up and down the lineup and on the mound, especially a young player like Dalbec who is finding other ways to contribute besides blasting the ball out of the ballpark.

After slumping at the plate, the first few games, it is good to see the young slugger producing winning hits at the plate.  He did so by taking advantage of the opposite field, which means he is not just up there trying to pull every pitch.

"“Like everybody else, if you control the strike zone and you control your aggression in the strike zone, you’re going to see results,” Cora said of Dalbec.  “We trust the player.  We know there are going to be a few days where he might swing and miss a lot, but we do believe he can make adjustments and he can go the other way.”"

He certainly did that on Tuesday, helping his team win a game they probably would’ve found a way to lose in 2020.

In conclusion, with bottom of the order players like Bobby Dalbec producing, J.D. Martinez and Rafael Devers looking like the second coming at the plate and Matt Barnes looking like Mariano Rivera in the late innings, the Boston Red Sox are too hot to handle.

Hey, not even the fidget temperature of Minnesota can cool the temperature of winning baseball.