All September, we were waiting to play a meaningful game. Well, on Tuesday night, that meaningful game arrived, but the Sox approach didn’t seem all that different from what we have been seeing from the “Sleepy Sox.”
Cam Schlittler was as dominant as we expected him to be, shutting out the Sox for 6.1 innings, allowing only two hits and one walk while blowing ten of them away.
The game was progressing pretty much as expected. Cam was going to deal, and it was incumbent upon Payton Tolle to match that electricity for as long as he could to try to give Boston’s offense a chance to catch a little lightning in a bottle and experience a moment of glory.
Unfortunately, Tolle wasn’t entirely up to that task. The young lefty pitched alright over the 4.2 innings he toed the rubber in the Bronx, but he wasn’t the force that Chad Tracy was hoping for.
From the start, it looked very touch and go for Tolle. He allowed a one-out double to Ben Rice in the first but was able to strike out Heliot Ramos and get Cody Bellinger to line out to end the threat.
In the second, Tolle surrendered hits to two of the first three men he faced but again appeared to be set up to get out of the inning unscathed when the nine-hole hitter, Austin Wells, came to the plate with men on first and second and two outs. Wells is a nice defensive catcher with a little bit of pop, but he was batting a dreadful .122 against left-handed pitchers and appeared to be just the guy Tolle needed at the plate at that time.
Unfortunately, Tolle threw a 1-0 sinker middle-in at only 92 MPH, and Wells cleaned it out for a base hit to right field that scored Lombard to give Schlittler and the Yankees the only run they would really need.
Tolle kept the Yankees off the scoreboard for the next 2.2 innings and appeared as though he would get the Sox through five innings trailing by only one run.
But Chad Tracy, or more likely, the computer that pumps out the analytical blueprint for how a Major League game played by the Boston Red Sox should be managed, decided differently.
With two outs, no one on base, and Ben Rice coming to the plate for his third at-bat of the game, Chad Tracy pulled Tolle to bring in another lefty, Erik Miller. The same Erik Miller who, over his last eight appearances in September, has looked a lot more like Wade Miller than Andrew Miller.
And so, on the third pitch of the at-bat, Miller threw a 96 MPH sinker middle-middle, and Rice deposited it into Monument Park. 2-0 Yankees, and that was pretty much it in the eyes of the Red Sox faithful.
What I didn’t expect was that it also represented the end of the game in the eyes of the Boston manager!
That is the only explanation I can come up with for why Alec “Game Ovah” Gamboa (thank you, Jim) entered a playoff game that was only 2-0 in the bottom of the seventh inning.
It was bad enough that Greg Weissert was called upon to pitch the sixth inning, but with the injury to Tyron Guerrero, I guess they needed someone to try to help bridge the gap from the starter to Whitlock and Chapman. But bringing in Gamboa can only be described as Tracy waving the metaphorical white flag.
Base hit, base hit, walk, base hit, and Boston was down 3-0, the bases were loaded, and most of Yankee Stadium hadn’t even made it back to their seats after running to the concession stand and restroom after “Take Me Out to the Ballgame!”
Gamboa out. Wyatt Olds in.
And to his credit, “The Marshal” did get a double play and flyout to limit the damage in the inning, but with the score 4-0 going to the eighth, the game was already DOA.
In the bottom of the eighth, the Yankees just added insult to injury when Ben Rice delivered his second homer of the game, this time a grand slam off Brayan Bello, to finish off the disaster, 9-0.
Punchless
We didn’t expect the Red Sox to do much against the soon-to-be American League Cy Young winner, but there was hope that this “juggernaut” of an offense that the newly extended President of Baseball Operations has put together would come through with more than two decent at-bats all game against him!
Adley Rutschman, in the top of the first inning, demonstrated what an actual professional at-bat by a Major League-caliber player looks like against a dominant pitcher. A ten-pitch at-bat that included four foul balls and a full count resulted in a base hit to the opposite field and provided a moment of hope to Red Sox Nation that maybe Boston did actually have a game plan to attack the Yankee ace and perhaps keep themselves in the game.
Fooled You!!!!
Schlittler struck out the next two hitters on seven pitches and went on to retire the next eleven batters in order.
With two outs in the fifth and the score 1-0, the second-best at-bat of the game came, thanks to Jarren Duran?!
Yes, Jarren Duran.
After going down 1-2, he managed to take two pitches up and away that he usually swings at nine out of ten times for balls. He fouled off the first 3-2 pitch he saw and then laid off another very close pitch on the outside corner.
A very nice at-bat from a most unusual suspect, but all for naught because Trevor Story swung at the first two pitches of his at-bat, fouling them both off, thus preventing Duran from stealing second base.
Not that he was actually trying, but hey, this is the “Small Ball Sox.”
Story eventually ended up flying out to center field, and as we know, that was about all she wrote.
Hanging Chad
Chad Tracy deserved all the praise he received for helping to resurrect the season this summer, but I fear that he might have been exposed on Tuesday night in the Bronx as he was outmanaged by Aaron Boone.
The same Aaron Boone who Yankees fans have been calling for the head of for years.
The decision to go to Alec Gamboa was very questionable, and then bringing in Wyatt Olds was a double down. I could have lived with that if he had just let the two of them finish up the game and take the beating that we all knew was coming once the game went to 2-0, let alone 4-0.
But why on Earth do you bring Brayan Bello into the eighth inning of that game when it was completely out of reach?
Are you trying to win, or are you just calling it quits?
Please, would some member of Red Sox management and/or the front office display a little bit of forward thinking for a change! I have made my views very clear that, for years, Boston’s “Plan” has always been simply half a plan, mainly based on reactionary thought as opposed to aggressive, forward-thinking thought.
Tuesday night was no different!
You spent all of September resting the players you thought were going to be crucial for the team to be successful in the postseason. Outside of the three starters scheduled to go in what could truly be the final three, if not two, games of the year, there are only three or four pitchers I want to see come out of the pen with a chance of being competitive and successful.
Brayan Bello is one of those guys and probably should have come in to start the sixth inning once they let Tolle complete the fifth. Then you go from there, hopefully down 1-0.
Instead, Miller comes in first, sketchy at best, and he failed.
Then you bring in Weissert. I don’t think anything more needs to be said about that guy, but credit to him for actually being successful in his inning on Tuesday.
Then you wave the white flag and go with Gamboa and Olds.
Why in the world do you bring Bello into the game there?
It was simply another reactionary move to a situation that was uncomfortable for the Red Sox.
We see that from ownership when they get booed at Fanfest: sign Devers.
We see it from the front office when they get made to look foolish in a negotiation with Bregman: overpay for Suárez.
Now we get the same thing from the manager.
Baseball requires intelligence and clear thought. It is pretty ironic that Boston leads the league in analytical consultants, has a PBO with a degree from Yale, and has a number of incredibly rich businessmen in its ownership group who clearly understand business and economics, yet when it comes to baseball sense...they lead the league in stupidity!