The Red Sox spent Friday morning stranded in Chicago. Their plane was grounded overnight, they didn’t take off until mid-afternoon, they landed at LaGuardia around 4:30, the first pitch got pushed to 7:50 — and they beat the Mets 6-2 anyway. Sonny Gray threw six innings of one-run ball to go to 11-1, Anthony Seigler and Wilyer Abreu hit two-run homers, and Boston won its seventh straight, per The Boston Globe and Boston.com. That’s 12 wins in their last 14. No sleep, no batting practice, no problem.
Saturday they go for eight in a row, and the math says they should get it.
What The Call sees
Our Elo model rates Boston sixth in baseball at 1522 and the Mets 27th at 1466 — a 56-point gap that erases most of New York’s home edge. The Call has the Red Sox at 54.6% as road favorites, a lean rather than a lock, but making the road team the pick at all tells you how far these clubs have drifted apart. Boston is 8-2 over its last ten. The Mets are 40-55, fifteen games under .500, and just lost the series opener at home to a team that was sitting on a Chicago tarmac six hours before first pitch.
What could break the pick
Freddy Peralta. The Mets hand him the ball Saturday, and our feed has him at a 4.68 ERA with a 4.29 FIP across 100 innings — not dominant numbers, but a real major-league starter with 100 innings of durability, facing a Boston lineup that just played a night game on zero rest and a chaotic travel day. The model applied no extra factors here; it’s a pure ratings call, which means the margin is thin. A 54.6% pick loses 45 times out of 100, and win streaks in baseball have a way of ending on quiet Saturday afternoons against pitchers nobody circled. If the Mets steal one, this is the profile it comes from.
There’s also the simple regression case: no team plays .857 baseball forever, and Boston’s streak has already survived a sweep in Chicago and an airport ordeal. At some point the adrenaline bill comes due.
The trip
If you’re a Boston fan making the Queens run, don’t hunt for a hotel near the ballpark — there isn’t one worth the name. Base in Manhattan or Long Island City and let the 7 train do the work; our Citi Field guide has the neighborhood calls, the train logistics, and the downtown Flushing food detour that turns a 4:10 first pitch into a full day.
