Wilyer Abreu is celebrates with Ceddanne Rafaela after hitting a two-run home run in the eighth inning of the Red Sox's 7-6 win over the Rays on Saturday in Boston. (Charles Krupa/Associated Press)

Red Sox Nation is positively giddy. Happier than a seagull with a beak full of stolen lobster roll.

Boston pushed its winning streak to 14 games with a come-from-behind 6-5 win over Baltimore on Monday evening. What just a few weeks ago looked like a lost summer now is full of promise.

The least you can ask of a Major League Baseball team is to spend the summer in the mix. The last thing you want is to be out of the playoff running by Memorial Day. A slog to the bitter end is just a countdown to winter, and that’s not fun. Take away hope, and all you have is communal misery barking on sports talk radio. Take away hope, and the second half of the baseball season is sentient heartburn.

In mid-June, questions about the Sox revolved around what they could get for pitchers Aroldis Chapman and Sonny Gray on the trade market. Surely some contender would overpay for either of those guys.

Now the Sox (51-48) are in possession of the third and final wild-card spot in an American League that feels weaker than instant coffee. It’s now apparent that the Sox don’t have to dominate down the stretch. They just need to be slightly less mediocre than the Orioles, Blue Jays, Twins, Mariners and Astros.

There is no need to set the bar unreachably high. The American League isn’t some Mount Everest this season. It’s more of a Katahdin. Challenging, but with the right determination and effort doable.

And that’s the question now. For the Red Sox, is slightly better than mediocre doable?

A hot streak of 14 straight wins is fantastic. Over the last month the Sox are 22-5. That’s a brilliant turnaround.

At the same time there’s those first 2 1/2 months of the season, a much larger sample size than the current run the team is on. It’s a telling stat that even playing inspired baseball over this stretch, the Red Sox are only 51-48 after their win Monday.

So which is the aberration?

Did this team just get hot or did it really turn a corner? Did interim manager Chad Tracy solve the puzzle and now knows when to push every button? The team isn’t as bad as it played early in the season, and not as good as it’s playing now. Over the next 2 1/2 months, we’ll find out which of those extremes is closer to the truth.

Connor Wong, left, Ryan Watson, center, and Ceddanne Rafaela, right, celebrate after the Red Sox beat the Rays 6-1 on Sunday in Boston. (Steven Senne/Associated Press)

We do know a few things. The Sox can pitch. Entering Monday, they boasted a team earned run average of 3.53, fourth-best in the majors. We know the hitting isn’t as bad as it was. We know Willson Contreras is the leader this team needed, and Wilyer Abreu inherited the clutch gene passed down from players like David Ortiz and Carl Yastrzemski.

We know Boston’s path in a ho-hum American League is not so perilous.

There are six teams in the American League over .500, with the Mariners sitting right at .500 (50-50) entering a game Monday night against the Cincinnati Reds. All six AL teams over .500 occupy a playoff spot. For the sake of argument, let’s say it’s going to take 85 wins to hold one of those spots.

The Sox have 63 games remaining. Going 34-29 gets them to 85 wins. That’s playing good baseball, but not out-of-your-mind good like the team played over the last few weeks. Six games over .500 down the stretch feels sustainable, doesn’t it? It forces Minnesota, Seattle and Baltimore to keep pace, and it forces Detroit, Toronto and Houston to go on runs similar to the Red Sox.

What does this team add at the trading deadline? Does it package prospects for a top-of-the-line everyday catcher? A right-handed power bat? Bullpen depth? How close are Garrett Crochet and Roman Anthony to returning?

Those questions are a lot more fun to debate than, “What do you think they can get for Chapman and Gray?”

The playoffs are on the table again. In a long season, that relevance means summer doesn’t fade so quickly.