The trade deadline injected even more juice into the already surging Red Sox, but interim manager Chad Tracy admitted he wasn’t exactly energized when the team returned from its West Coast trip.
He was gassed.
Thanks to flight issues, the Red Sox didn’t return from Los Angeles until 11 a.m. Monday. Tracy tried his best to rest while keeping his phone close by.
“To be honest with you, I laid in bed for a while,” he said.
The Red Sox were busy, adding Adley Rutschman, Jake Rogers, Eli White, and Erik Miller. That meant Tracy had to prepare himself not only to acclimate the new faces but also to bid difficult goodbyes to players who had helped the team climb out of a 14-game hole and back into contention.
“There was a lot on my mind when I woke up,” Tracy said. “Excitement about meeting the guys that were coming in here. Also thinking about the conversations that I felt like we were talking through that I was going to have to have.”
Once everything was settled, there was still the matter of opening a series at Fenway Park against the AL Central-leading White Sox.
“So there was a lot today, but at some point you’re going to get it settled and you’re going to go out and play a baseball game,” Tracy said.
The lineup made the baseball game the easy part. After the front office spent Monday adding resources to a surging team, the Red Sox showed why they were worth the investment by bludgeoning Chicago, 14-2, on Tuesday night for their sixth straight win.
“That feels good,” Caleb Durbin said. “Any time you can go out and get those reinforcements. The front office has really believed in us the whole entire season, even when we were scuffling.”
Before the White Sox could blink, they were buried. The Red Sox hung six runs on Chicago in the first inning. Willson Contreras slapped an RBI single to center field, but Durbin did most of the damage, launching his first career grand slam into the Monster seats. Jarren Duran followed with a solo shot into the right-field bleachers.
“Just good at-bats,” Durbin said. “I feel like we’re suffocating the pitcher, no matter who it is.”
The last time the Red Sox scored at least six runs in the first inning was Sept. 14 of last season, against the Yankees (also six).
The big inning gave Red Sox starter Patrick Sandoval room to kick up his feet. The lefthander allowed two runs on six hits and four walks, with five strikeouts, in five innings to pick up his first win since May 7, 2024.
The Red Sox gave Sandoval all the runs he needed in the first inning, but had more in the tank.
Wilyer Abreu added his first of two solo home runs in the fifth. Then the Red Sox piled on with another six-run avalanche in the sixth on Andruw Monasterio’s two-run single, Ceddanne Rafaela’s two-run double, Contreras’s RBI single, and Masataka Yoshida’s run-scoring double.
The last time the Red Sox put up two six-run innings in the same game was April 27, 2024, when they scored six in both the fifth and eighth innings of a 17-0 win over the Cubs. The only other team to do it this season was the Giants, who scored six in the fourth and seven in the sixth of an 18-3 win over the Cubs on June 5.
Abreu’s second homer closed out the scoring in the eighth inning.
After leaning into small ball to spark the surge that has put them in third place in the AL East and in control of the second wild card, the Red Sox have emerged as the top power-hitting lineup in the American League. Since July 9, no AL team has hit more homers than their 31.
“The small ball gets a lot of attention because early on we kind of got going and the identity it created, finding ways to score runs when we’re not hitting for power,” Tracy said. “But then as we did that, guys started to get comfortable and started swinging the bat good, then the power started to come.”
The deadline behind them, the Red Sox showed they are primed to make a push down the stretch.
“There’s always that noise during the trade deadline, a couple weeks before,” Durbin said. “Who are we going to pick up and whatnot. So that’s over, and it feels good, and we got our guys, and now it’s just time to go to work with the group we have.”
Julian Benbow can be reached at julian.benbow@globe.com.