The circumstances were different then, and so too were the expectations.
But the template for what this summer’s pleasantly surprising Red Sox team must do to enhance both their roster and very real playoff chances can be found six seasons and a couple of front-office honchos ago.
The approach first-year chief baseball officer Craig Breslow must take with these upstart Red Sox — who have 53 wins at the All-Star break, or roughly 10 fewer than many prognosticators projected for them over the entire season — is precisely the one then-president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski took to bolster the 2018 Sox juggernaut.