BOSTON — 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.

Over the last two weekends, the Red Sox have taken two out of three from the Los Angeles Dodgers and swept the Houston Astros, both at Fenway Park. It’s Boston’s first sweep of the Astros since April 2013.

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

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

Houston’s lead lasted all of five minutes.

“Right now, we’re not getting down at all,” said Red Sox starter Lucas Giolito, who pitched a season-high eight innings. “We’re answering back. I gave up a big home run that shifted the momentum in the Astros’ favor, and then we answered back immediately with just fantastic at-bats, running everything out, hustling, playing really lockdown defense. So yeah, I think we just have that edge of like, no matter what’s going on early in the game, midway through the game, even midway through the game, we know that we can win, and we have that confidence to be able to go out and execute.”

In the bottom of the fourth, things got weird. Framber Valdez faced the entire starting nine in a six-run barrage. 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. It was his first time allowing as many as three runs in an inning since May 18.

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 a six-inning performance. 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. The loss ended his career-best streak of 10 consecutive winning decisions, the longest by an Astros pitcher since Gerrit Cole’s franchise-record 16 in 2019.

It was yet another Giolito gem: one earned run on three hits over eight innings, not only a season high, but his longest start since Aug. 9, 2021. The veteran righty threw 103 pitches, 67 for strikes.

“What I liked most (about my start) was securing the sweep, for sure,” Giolito said. “Pitching strong, going deep, giving the bullpen a little bit of a break. … Once we had that big inning, we put up six runs, I was like, all right just keep on attacking, keep on attacking, and we did that.”

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.

After a trade deadline that many evaluators deemed underwhelming at best, it was a statement series for the Red Sox.

“We’ve been very vocal about it,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “We love our team. We really like our team, and the guys have probably relaxed a little bit, and they’ve been able to play with joy, and enjoying the game and playing the game the right way.”

“I think that with everybody we have, we have a very good chance to win every single game,” Giolito said. “Within this clubhouse, we have belief in each other. We have belief in ourselves, no matter how the deadline ended up, that we know we’re a very good baseball team, we can win a lot of games. … Especially with how we’ve been playing, I think it’s important to keep the group together, keep everyone gelled together and firing from all cylinders, and we’ve been doing that.”

And after being swept by the Astros at Fenway each of the last two Augusts, the Red Sox sent a message:

We aren’t those Red Sox anymore.

“We’re much better than the last two years,” Cora said. “We’re healthier. That series against them here a few years ago, we had no pitching. It was Chris (Sale), (Kyle) Barraclough, and somebody else … that was the reality of it. Last year, we grinded with them and then (James Paxton) got hurt after the first batter, and it put us in a bad spot for a week right after that series.

“I always look at the seasons, and I hate comparing ourselves to other teams, but the last two years that series put us in a bad spot. And it’s a lot different right now. We got a complete team. Guys are playing with an edge now. You can tell.”

Facts and figures

The Red Sox are 62-51, with a five-game winning streak. They have won seven of their last eight, and are 9-6 since the All-Star break.

At Fenway, the Red Sox are 12-1 in their last 13 games, 14-2 in their last 16, and 21-5 since June 4.

This is Boston’s sixth sweep, surpassing last year’s total of five. The Red Sox need to go 20-29 or better over the rest of the schedule in order to finish with a winning record for the first time since ’21.

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