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9 thoughts on the Red Sox’ loss to the Rays in Game 1 of the ALDS, leading into Game 2
Playing nine innings while noting that Kyle Schwarber stealing a base was only about the ninth-goofiest thing from the Sox-Rays opener …
1. The Trop stinks. The baseball team that calls it home (at least until a portion of its games are eventually/hopefully farmed out to Montreal) most certainly does not. We knew the former long before Thursday night. Quite a few fans around here, still buzzing from extending the Yankees’ championship drought to 12 years, probably needed a reminder of the latter – and did they ever get one.
The Rays scored two runs in the first, one each in the third, fifth, and seventh, and breezed to a 5-0 victory in the American League Division Series opener. The game was an annoying amalgam of all the things they do well: Their fielders were perfectly positioned all night (the Sox had nine hits, all singles). Every unheralded Rays pitcher fired bullets with movement (starter Shane McClanahan’s four-seam fastball moves like a 98 mph screwball, which is all kinds of cruel). They play with an aggressiveness and electricity that reminds me of Willie Wilson, George Brett, and the ‘70s Royals used to make the Red Sox look like a Beer League softball team when they’d visit Kansas City.
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I don’t know if the Rays are the best team in baseball. But after Thursday night, I’ll hear the argument. If you entered this series wondering how the allegedly anonymous Rays do it, well, you just saw it.
2. We could refer to Game 1 as the Randy Arozarena Show, but really, the entire postseason has been the Randy Arozarena Show since he got to the big leagues. This, apparently, was just the first episode of Season 2.
Talk about setting the tone in the game and the series: Arozarena walked to lead off the night, booked it around from first when Kike Hernandez power-dribbled Wander Franco’s double, and scored the first of his three runs. In the fifth, he walloped a home run off reliever Nick Pivetta for a 4-0 lead. And in the seventh, he pulled off one of the rarest – and certainly the most exciting – plays in baseball: A steal of home. Wasn’t close, either. That’s how Jackie Robinson – and, when I was a kid, Rod Carew – used to do it. As frustrating as it was for the Red Sox, it’s always cool to be reminded of the feats of those legends.
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3. Meanwhile, Arozarena, technically a rookie this season, continues to build his own legend, at least in the postseason. In 95 playoff plate appearances, he has 11 home runs and a 1.261 OPS. I’d suggest the Sox should just give him the Barry Bonds treatment and walk him, but he’d probably just steal second, third and home, then eat some more popcorn in the dugout like it was no big deal. I’m going to presume the Cardinals probably regret trading him, Jose Martinez, and a supplemental first-round pick to the Rays for pitchers Matthew Liberatore and Edgardo Rodriguez before the 2020 season.
4. Even the surest things among prospects sometimes take a year or two to adjust. Mike Trout had a .672 OPS in 135 plate appearances when he came up with the Angels in 2011. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. owned a mediocre .778 career OPS entering this season. Wander Franco, the no-doubt best prospect in baseball entering this season, is an incredible player already. For a 20-year-old, he has remarkable command of the strike zone (24 walks, 37 strikeouts in 308 plate-appearances since his mid-June recall). He provided 3.5 Wins Above Replacement in just 70 games, posted an .810 OPS, and rapped 30 extra-base hits. Not bad for the youngest player in the league.
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5. Franco, who had a pair of doubles and seemed to be in the middle of everything good that happened for the Rays Thursday, plays with great flair, too, though it was curious to see him berate Arozarena last week when the right fielder called him off on a pop-up.
They looked like the opposites of the ol’ Adrian Beltre/Elvis Andrus relationship, when Andrus would cut off Beltre on popups just to get a laugh out of agitating him. Dodgers fans are going to adore Franco in six years or so when they swoop in and give him a half a billion dollars after the Rays decide not to pay him. You think I’m kidding.
6. To reiterate: The Trop stinks. It also rots. It’s a turf-covered landfill. It’s the worst arena/stadium/abandoned rave site at which I’ve ever attended a sporting event. I don’t even know what’s second. It looks like a storage facility for worn-out mini-golf equipment and rusted Jet-Skis.
The latest evidence of its sheer dumpiness came in the third inning, when Nelson Cruz crushed a ball off Nick Pivetta that was clearly ticketed for the center field seats … right up until it one of the rings on the catwalk near the roof and ricocheted down to the center field turf. It was still, rightly, a home run. But when you have to have ground rules in case the ball hits catwalks in the sky, you know you’re not at a serious place.
Nelson Cruz just hit a ball off of the catwalk and it was ruled a home run 🤯 pic.twitter.com/6RNSu3pftE
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 8, 2021
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7. Sometimes Rafael Devers doesn’t look right, and then all of a sudden he crushes one 440 feet and looks extremely right. His case of doesn’t-look-right looked different Thursday night, though. He missed some hittable pitches, and seemed to shake his hand or grab his arm every time he swung but didn’t make contact.
Colleagues Alex Speier and Michael Silverman reported Friday morning that Devers has been dealing with discomfort in his forearm, noting that he’s been wearing a compression sleeve on his right arm since awkwardly striking out against the Yankees’ Nestor Cortes on Sept. 25. In a sense, that’s reassuring if the injury hasn’t worsened: he hit .355 with 3 homers and a 1.052 OPS in seven regular-season games after that date.
8. The Red Sox are going to need the majority of breaks and bounces to go their way if they’re going to win this series. The Rays are better pretty much across the board. The only one the Sox got Thursday night came in the eighth inning, when a one-out pop-up by Xander Bogaerts with two runners on fell in after center fielder Kevin Kiermaier appeared to lose it in the stupid white-ish Trop roof. But Devers swung through a 92 mph fastball (that might as well be a changeup for the Rays staff, actually) for strike three, and Hunter Renfroe popped out as the threat – really, they’re only threat — fizzled.
9. Just one of those lousy nights, across the board. They can’t afford to have another one against this annoyingly excellent Rays team. Time to be a stopper, Chris Sale. (Gulp.)
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