Just how rare is this Red Sox turnaround? It’s already one of the greatest in MLB history.

Typically, once the losses start drowning the wins, teams don’t recover. The Red Sox understood that as they watched their season freefall from seven games under .500 when manager Alex Cora was fired in April to rock bottom at 14 games under through the first 45 games of interim manager Chad Tracy’s tenure.

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The last time the Sox fell 14 games under .500 was during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. Even if that team had a turnaround in it, there wasn’t enough time to rebound.

Before that it was the 2014 and 2015 teams — hung over from the 2013 World Series run — and the chicken-and-beer 2012 season. Before this year, the only team in Red Sox history to climb out of a hole 14 games under or deeper and finish above .500 was the 1996 club.

Generally, once teams fall 14 games under .500, they take it as a sign to pack up the season. The Angels, Rockies, Royals, Mets, Giants, Tigers, and Athletics are all living out that reality right now.

The Sox were on the brink of sinking along with them.

Instead they became one of baseball’s rarest resets.

Over 155 years of baseball history, courtesy of Retrosheet data, 1,141 teams have fallen 14 or more games under .500. Going into this season, only 38 managed to get back to .500.

The Sox made it 39.

As remarkable as the team’s 15-game win streak was, salvaging a season that had reached its last rites was arguably an even more improbable feat.

“I get it, having gone through it, it’s improbable, the run that we’re on, especially the way we were going,” Tracy said. “It’s baseball, right? Teams can get hot. When you get hot, you start feeling really good about yourself. You can rattle off some wins.”

Turnarounds like this are rare.

The Marlins did it last season when they clawed back from 16 games under at 24-40 to get even at 55-55. It took them two months, with an eight-game winning streak in between, to do it. But staying above water was the hard part. They dropped seven of their next nine. By September, they were 12 games under and, despite winning 12 of their final 16, the Marlins still finished 79-83.

Before that, it hadn’t been done since the 2014 Rays clawed back from 18 games under to get back in contention.

Of the 38 previous teams that climbed back to even footing, 20 finished .500 or better. The last team to climb out of at least a 14-game deficit and finish .500 was the 2011 Dodgers.

But turning a season around and extending it are two different tasks. The only three teams that have fallen at least 14 games under .500 and reached the postseason: the 2005 Astros, the 1974 Pirates, and the 1914 Boston Braves.

At their lowest point, in June, the Sox were in last place in the AL East, 15½ games out of first.

But they were just 6½ games back in the wild-card race.

Rather than fold the way 97 percent of teams in their position had, the wild-card race gave the Sox enough incentive to keep trying to salvage the season.

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“Maybe there’s a lot of instances in those cases where they’re 14 games under and ordinarily you look up and you’re like, ‘Aw, we’re like 12, 13 games out of a playoff spot or more.’ And you feel like there’s no chance,” Tracy said. “But maybe the dynamics of the American League has kind of helped in the sense that no matter where we got — at one point we were the worst in the American League — we felt like we had a good team. We felt like we weren’t playing to our capability.

“We also looked up and said, ‘We’re not mathematically [out of it]. It’s not crazy. It’s not outrageous. If we have one good run, just one good run, we’re at least right there.’”

With three wild-card spots, seasons that once would have been unsalvageable can now be worth saving. And an underperforming American League left the door open for the Sox to creep back into contention.

Now they’re in sole possession of the AL’s third wild-card spot.

“I think the dynamics of the American League kept them believing that we just have to get close, we just have to get back into it,” Tracy said. “So not only did we get close, we got all the way and climbed the mountain. I think that helped.”

The Sox’s 15-game win streak expedited the process.

Their turnaround took just 24 games, one of the fastest swings in baseball history.

The three fastest belong to the 1999 Padres (14-game deficit, 14-game recovery), the 1961 White Sox (14-game deficit, 16-game recovery) and the 1965 Pirates (16-game deficit, 19-game recovery).

The Sox are tied with the 2001 Mets for the fourth-fastest turnaround after hitting rock bottom.

“It was sitting there,” Tracy said. “You feel like, ‘Man, we’re playing poorly, we’re not doing anything right right now. But it’s like no matter what’s happening, the carrot’s still just sitting there dangling.’ And that matters. If it looks like you might be a .500 team to get into the playoffs this year, then that’s what we’ve got to do.”

Of the 17 teams that have put together winning streaks of at least 14 games since 1969, with the exception of the ‘99 Padres, none were pulling their seasons out of the ashes the way these Red Sox were.

The Mariners and Braves both ripped off 14 straight wins in 2022. The Mariners were five games under .500 when their streak started. The Braves were four under. The Rangers were three games under when they won 14 straight in 1991. The Twins won 15 straight that same year. They were two games under. The Braves were 5-6 when they won 15 straight in 2000.

Of those 17 teams, all but three made the playoffs — the 1999 Padres, 1994 Royals, and 1991 Rangers were the exceptions.

But at the same time, teams that climb out of holes like the one the Sox were in rarely make it to the postseason.

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