Liam MacKenzie
As of September 23rd, 2025, the Boston Red Sox are one of several teams in the MLB that are keeping fans on the edge of their seats as they are battling it out with teams like the Cleveland Guardians, Houston Astros, Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers for a spot in the MLB playoffs as the regular is winding down at the end of September.
The Red Sox have a record of 85-71 and need 5 more victories to clinch their first postseason berth since the magical 2021 season. They will have their hands full as their last 2 series of the season consist of making a trip across the Northern Border to play the Toronto Blue Jays who not only are the team atop the American League East, but the team who is atop the standings in the American League. That series will start tonight as the mound will be taken by Lucas Giolito, followed by Crochet tomorrow night and Bello on Thursday who got switched with Crochet for the last game of the series due to an extra day of needed rest. The final series of the regular season is at Fenway against the second-best team in the American League, the Detroit Tigers.
What we know as of right now is that the Red Sox currently hold the 2nd wild card spot in the AL and holding onto it will be a challenging task as the Cleveland Guardians went on a 10 game win streak to put themselves right behind the Red Sox. As mentioned before, 5 games need to be won in order to make it to the playoffs and if they were to win less than that, the team would have to do some scoreboard watching and hope that the Guardians or Astros will most likely suffer losses. Out of those two, the Guardians may be the bigger threat as they close their season against the Tigers and Rangers. Detroit, as mentioned before, is the opponent the Red Sox will face in the regular season series finale after the Blue Jays series in Toronto.
As goes for the two teams in Texas, the Astros post the same record as the Guardians where as for them, they are faced with a less difficult task as they take on an Athletics team who do have some good offensive production but struggle with consistency from their pitching which will be an advantage for an Astros offense that has been pretty solid this season. Meanwhile for the Rangers, they take on a Twins team who has been due for a series win in the month of September as their last series win came at the end of August against the San Diego Padres. After that, the Rangers take on the Guardians which Red Sox fans hope can go in the way of the Rangers after the recent winning that Cleveland has been having.
Now where is Seattle in all of this? Well after their recent sweep of Houston, they are in the driver’s seat of the AL West and if something were to happen where Houston starts winning and losses tally on Seattle’s record constantly, than it raises the concern of Boston fans hoping that the Red Sox can win and not be put in a stressful situation of missing the playoffs. With the Mariners playing the Rockies, it would be easy to say that they put first place of the AL West to rest (no pun intended) as they are expected to get the sweep against the worst team in baseball.
So what would be the most likely scenario to occur over the 6 day span? I would expect the Sox to win 2 out of 3 games in the last two series of the season as getting a sweep against either the Blue Jays or Tigers would be unlikely, but that will be decided during this stressful week at the end of September. With the return of Wilyer Abreu into the Red Sox lineup during the most important time of the season, it will not only give the Red Sox a good chance of trying to sneak into the postseason, but give a boost to an offense who has been lack luster with the loss of Roman Anthony due to a back injury. The Red Sox bullpen will also need to hold its ground after their late game struggles with leads being wiped away and putting themselves in dangerous situations with runners being walked multiple times and runners being put in scoring position.
The Red Sox’s playoff hopes remain alive, but the margin for error is razor thin as they will need great baseball during this span of time.
