WIt was one of the years where I completely loved the team. Was it a juggernaut? Nope. Pedro was having one of the greatest seasons of all time. The team went down 0-2 to the Guardians with Pedro left for dead. Sox hammered away at the Guardians in games 3 and 4. Then Pedro had his amazing game 5.
For me, that season erased a lot of the "this team is cursed" bs I grew up with. Did they beat the Yankees? No. But it was the first year I felt they could actually compete with them. It gave me hope for the future.
I'm not such a miserable prick that not winning a WS doesn't ruin a fun season for me. You can't win every year. If someone doesn't enjoy baseball enough that they need to s*** on a team because they overachieved but didn't win the WS, they should find something else to do.