Let's just take a moment, here.

[Sandy Leon Trotsky]

I want to give Xander some love here too. Hard to pick a single favorite player on this team but his improvement on the offensive side this season has really anchored the club. He was relatively consistent all season long and into the playoffs- which is hopefully the start of something new. But the whole core of this team: Betts, Xander, Benintendi, JBJ and now Devers (as the pure home grown talent core) have been great. Some struggles here and there... but as a group it seemed like when one of them struggled the others picked it up, etc.... Adding JDM into the mix is really the difference though. We saw it last year when not having a true slugger anchoring the lineup would cause a power outage ripple effect (not sure if this is provable... but it sure felt like his presence there made it more difficult to pitch to the other guys all around.

 

[staz]

At a press conference in mid-April, when the Sox record was ridiculous-and-one, I remember Cora saying the team had actually been playing great baseball since spring training. I remember looking at the ST standings and being surprised they ended up 22-9, the best record in baseball.

Not that a team's ST record matters, but that data point, together with Cora's comment, and the April results all pointed toward the conclusion the team was very well-constructed and playing at a high level from the get-go. Based on that, none of this is really that surprising. Satisfying to be sure, but there's no Cinderella here - it's all based on a rock-solid foundation.

(FWIW, Houston has the 2nd best record at 21-9, followed by Milwaukee (Cactus) with 19-12.)
https://www.mlb.com/standings/spring-training

 

[Hank Scorpio]

I want to give Xander some love here too. Hard to pick a single favorite player on this team but his improvement on the offensive side this season has really anchored the club. He was relatively consistent all season long and into the playoffs- which is hopefully the start of something new. But the whole core of this team: Betts, Xander, Benintendi, JBJ and now Devers (as the pure home grown talent core) have been great. Some struggles here and there... but as a group it seemed like when one of them struggled the others picked it up, etc.... Adding JDM into the mix is really the difference though. We saw it last year when not having a true slugger anchoring the lineup would cause a power outage ripple effect (not sure if this is provable... but it sure felt like his presence there made it more difficult to pitch to the other guys all around.

It’s certainly been a refreshing change of pace from recent years when it often seemed like the whole team would mash for a bit, then every single player would seemingly go into a 2-4 week slump at the same time.