When the Red Sox team flight back from Colorado last month was delayed and the club didn’t land in Boston until 5 a.m. the next morning, interim manager Chad Tracy let his players report to the ballpark an hour later than usual so they could catch up on their sleep.

Since then the Red Sox have been the hottest team in baseball, and the later report times have become a regular occurrence.

Monday the Red Sox once again reported to Fenway Park later than usual for a night game, with the main difference being that the club skipped batting practice on the field. Instead the Red Sox have focused their efforts on hitting in the cages, running through other typical pregame meetings and drills, and making sure they’re fresh and ready for first pitch.

Tracy said with so much arduous travel and a lot of day games recently it’s made sense to dial back the pregame itinerary.

“It just felt like let’s take it easy and do what we need to do to be ready to play at 7 or 6:40, whatever time the game is,” Tracy said. “And we are approaching August, I’ve always said by the time you get to August you should have a pretty good feel for your swing, you can still go in the cage and you can still go out and do some defensive work. So we’re getting a lot of the same stuff in it just minimizes the amount of time they’re on their feet.”

The results have spoken for themselves. Since the first late report time on June 25 the Red Sox have won 18 of 20 games entering Monday, going from 14 games below .500 to two games over and in sole possession of the third American League Wild Card spot.

The players have also appreciated the extra rest.

“It’s definitely helping with the streak that we’re on,” said second baseman Anthony Seigler. “I’m not going to say it’s all because of that but Trace has a great feel of the team and how we respond with our bodies, and he’s doing a great job with that.”

“It’s just playing off of our schedule, we had a couple of west coast trips so you have a couple of time zone changes that isn’t the easiest to work through with sleep schedules,” said third baseman Caleb Durbin. “Obviously rest is a big part of this part of the season, we’re getting into kind of the dog days of the season, and rest and recovery is super important.”

Because the road team always takes on-field batting practice second, the Red Sox still got plenty of batting practice during their recent road trip while still getting to the park late. Several players also noted that even if the report time is set slightly later, a lot of people will still come in early if they have extra work to get done.

“You can do your whole routine in the cage, we have all the tools,” said catcher Carlos Narvaez. “If you need the machine, if you need Trajekt, if you need more time or whatever, it’s fine. Of course you may need at some point to do BP outside to see the ball fly, but we’ve been traveling a lot, it’s been hot out there, so everybody is feeling ok.”

Since that nightmare flight home from Colorado the Red Sox have played during the day eight times in 20 games, a stretch that also included a second west coast trip out to Anaheim and another travel disaster that saw the club land in New York less than three hours before its scheduled first pitch against the Mets.

That latter incident was a galvanizing moment for the Red Sox, who have embraced the idea of showing up and playing ball as their team’s identity.

“It started with that plane ride, we flew in and got to the stadium two hours before game time, and it didn’t matter, we were ready to compete,” Durbin said. “So I think we’re adopting that mindset, it doesn’t matter where we’re at, what time it’s at, how hard the schedule is, we’re going to come in and we’re going to show up.”