Overreacting to Opening Day is a baseball tradition. We’ve waited all winter thinking about a team’s construction and then jump to conclusions based on first impressions.

It’s folly, of course. The Boston Red Sox will play more than 1,500 innings of baseball this summer so it’s ridiculous to base opinions on nine innings.

But that doesn’t stop us. And the reviews of Boston’s Opening Day loss were understandably negative after the Sox gave up 10 runs in a loss to the Orioles.

“Not surprisingly, the Red Sox already are back in last place,” was the headline of Dan Shaughnessy’s piece in The Boston Globe recapping Thursday’s loss.

They were out of last place less than 48 hours later, riding an explosive offense to a pair of wins to take the series from Baltimore.

If opening weekend is an indication of things to come, the Boston baseball season is going to be a wild ride. On Thursday the Sox trailed 8-2 in the sixth but scored five runs over the final two innings and had the tying run in scoring position when the game ended.

On Saturday they trailed 7-1 in the third before staging a wild comeback that culminated in a walk-off home run by Adam Duvall. His six extra-base hits over the first three games of his Red Sox career was a franchise record.

In the final game of the weekend, the Sox scored runs in six of the eight innings they batted. They became the first team since 1978 — and just the third since 1901 — to score nine or more runs in each of their first three games to start the season. The bats were relentless.

“From top to bottom we believe we are going to put pressure on the opposition,” said Manager Alex Cora. “There’s certain days it’s not going to work but we’re going to grind and do what we did over the weekend.”

What they did over the weekend is bludgeon their way to a series win over an American East team. Last year they didn’t win a divisional series until August. It was satisfying, even if it wasn’t pretty.

Boston’s starting pitching gave up 15 earned runs in 11 1/3 innings against the Orioles. Red Sox pitchers walked nine batters on Opening Day as fans lustily booed the home team.

The Orioles ran wild on the Sox, stealing a major league record 10 bases over the first two games of the season. They didn’t get thrown out once. Blame the bigger bases, or the inability of Boston pitchers to vary their cadence with the new pitch clock counting them down. Whatever the case, the Sox looked defenseless against the Baltimore running game.

Boston’s bats were able to overcome other troubles against the Orioles. You can’t count on that happening all season long.

“It’s what we’ve been preaching since day one in spring training,” Red Sox shortstop Kiké Hernández said to NESN’s Jahmai Webster after Sunday’s game. “Passing the baton, extending to the next guy up. We did a good job of that. We picked up our pitchers, and there’s gonna be a time when the pitchers are going to have to pick us up.”

The pitching will need to improve dramatically for that to happen. The Sox hope that will happen when Garrett Whitlock and Brayan Bello return from injuries. Whitlock pitched well for Triple-A Worcester on Friday and should return after one more minor-league outing. Brayan Bello is a week or so behind him. Both pitchers are scheduled to make starts for the Portland Sea Dogs this week.

So what do we make of opening weekend? Will this be the major league equivalent of a slow-pitch softball team hammering it’s way to double-digit runs throughout the season? Or will the pitching cost the Red Sox a chance to compete for a playoff spot? It’s far too early to draw any conclusions from what we’ve seen so far.

But that won’t stop us from doing exactly that.

Tom Caron is a studio host for the Red Sox broadcast on NESN. He is a Lewiston High School graduate.

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