Following the Red Sox this season has been like riding a roller coaster, with the club hurdling over rapid climbs and plunging down unnerving drops with seemingly nothing in between.

The club opened the season with a 7-3 road trip on the west coast, only to then go 3-7 on the ensuing homestand. Then they went 8-3 over their next 11 games, reaching a season-high five games above .500 at 18-13 on May 1. Then the bats went silent and the Red Sox went 4-11 over their following 15 games, erasing all that progress and putting them a season-worst two games under .500 (22-24) and 9.5 games back in the AL East.

Now they’ve won four straight to get back over .500, but face a couple of tough tests against the Milwaukee Brewers and Baltimore Orioles to close out the month.

How they handle the coming weeks will tell us a lot about this team and its ultimate potential.

This sort of see-saw spring is nothing new, and the Red Sox endured similar highs and lows early in each of their last two seasons. In 2022 the Red Sox started 10-19, eventually rose to 42-31 and steadily faded down the stretch throughout the second half. In 2023 the trend was more like this year, with the club oscillating between big winning streaks and big losing streaks before, once again, fading in the second half.

One thing this year’s group has going for it is its superior pitching and defense. The Red Sox starting rotation has ranked among the best in baseball through the first two months, the bullpen is solid, and the team has cleaned up much of the sloppiness that cost it so many games in past years. There is still progress to be made and mistakes still happen, but the foundation is much stronger than it used to be.

More importantly, the Red Sox have become a much more athletic and dynamic club, one that’s capable of producing offense in a variety of ways.

“You’re not going to hit the ball out of the ballpark all the time, but you can do the other stuff,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said following Wednesday’s win. “You can play defense every day. Speed isn’t going to slump, you get to first you can steal second, you can score from second with a bloop single. We’ve got a bunch of athletes, and I’m happy with that.”

The Red Sox current winning streak isn’t going to last forever, but the key for Boston now is to stack up wins and limit damage whenever the inevitable downturns come. That means winning as many series as possible, and when series losses do happen, avoiding sweeps and making sure not to drop multiple in a row.

This year’s team is better equipped to achieve that level of consistency. Now the question is whether they can get off the roller coaster and instead start moving on a steady, upwards trajectory.