Chicago White Sox at Boston Red Sox

BOSTON – Not only do the Red Sox have the wins, piles of them of late, but they also have the power. The big question going into the season was this: Who would hit the ball out of the yard on this team after chief baseball officer Craig Breslow’s well-chronicled pivot to pitching and defense? For months, the Sox lagged at or near the bottom of the Majors in homers. But the Boston bats have demonstrated plenty of thump during its torrid run, which included four more longballs in Tuesday’s 14-2 victory over the White Sox. Make it eight homers in the last two games for the Sox, and 30 since the All-Star break, which is second in MLB over that span to the Braves. “I think we talked a good bit about the small ball and it got a lot of attention because early on, when we kind of first started to get going, it created an identity for us finding ways to score runs when we weren’t hitting for power,” said interim manager Chad Tracy. “But as we did that, the guys started to get comfortable and started swinging the bat well and then the power started to come. When you take those two things and combine it, it can be really dynamic, and that's what you're seeing now. We've definitely ramped up the power component of this, too, and really started to turn that on, which has been great to see.”