For the past few years, facing the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros early in the second half of the season has been the beginning of the end of the Red Sox’s playoff hopes. The Red Sox looked woefully outmatched by teams built to go the distance.

The shoe is finally on the other foot.

After taking two of three from the visiting Dodgers last weekend, the Red Sox swept the Astros at Fenway.

For the third game in a row, Houston struck first, but Boston hit harder. They defeated their American League rivals 6-1 to improve to 11 games over .500 for the first time since 2022.

Carlos Correa’s 411-foot Green Monster home run broke a scoreless tie in the top of the fourth.

Then, things got weird.

Framber Valdez faced the entire starting nine in a six-run bottom of the fourth. Six men reached base before the Astros starter recorded an out.

The comeback began with a Roman Anthony leadoff double to deep left-center. The rookie is the fifth player in franchise history to collect 15 two-baggers within the first 46 games of his career; Jed Lowrie (2008) and Ted Williams (1939) are the only other Red Sox rookies to reach that mark in the last century.

Valdez walked Romy Gonzalez, Trevor Story tied the game with a line-drive RBI-single to right, and Ceddanne Rafaela gave Boston the lead with a line-drive RBI-single to left.

The inning devolved into chaos after that.

With Abraham Toro up to bat, Valdez became the second Astros pitcher in as many days to balk. Story scored and Rafaela advanced to second.

A wild pitch brought Rafaela to third, where he stayed put as Toro ground Valdez’s fourth pitch two feet on the left side of the infield. The pitcher raced over but he couldn’t throw the ball to first in time, and the runners were safe on the corners.

Wilyer Abreu’s sacrifice bunt should have been the first out of the inning. Instead, Valdez made a fielding error as Rafaela scored the fourth run, and Abreu and Toro were safe on first and second.

Next up was Connor Wong. During his at-bat, what was originally scored as a wild pitch – later changed to a passed ball by catcher Yainer Diaz – moved the runners to second and third. Wong’s sacrifice fly became Valdez’s long-awaited first out, and Rob Refsnyder’s RBI ground-out became the second.

Alex Bregman’s lineout finally brought Valdez’s nightmare inning to an end.

As if the Astros starter’s fourth-inning unraveling wasn’t perplexing enough, he returned to the mound and pitched a pair of 1-2-3 innings to finish off his day. In total, Valdez allowed six runs, four earned, on seven hits, one walk, and three strikeouts. He was charged with one wild pitch, one hit-by-pitch, one balk, and one pitch clock violation.

Lucas Giolito’s velocity was down for the second start in a row, but that didn’t stop him from pitching yet another gem: one earned run on three hits over eight innings, not only a season-high, but his longest start since Aug. 9, 2021. He threw 103 pitches, 67 for strikes.

In 10 starts since his seven-run implosion on June 4, Giolito owns a 2.03 ERA with just 14 earned runs allowed over 62 innings. His ERA for the season is 3.57.

Chris Murphy pitched a ninth inning that felt unnecessary. The Astros had left the building long ago.