Sweeping the Yankees speaks well of Red Sox future, but what of their present?
The Red Sox head to Minnesota with those most volatile of compounds: Momentum and hope.
COMMENTARY
The plot thickens.
In this space on Friday morning, I wrote, “Even if they were to sweep New York this weekend, the standings and numbers wouldn’t look much better [for the Red Sox]. But they’d sure feel a lot better.”
Here we are.
Friday night’s 15-5 rout came with the frightening line drive off Tanner Houck’s cheek, the joy of an offensive breakout against their rivals gone in an instant. The news is good, but only relatively: The ball didn’t hit the young starter in the eye, but did break something, landing him on the injured list.
A significant issue given his place in the starters’ surge, but take your moment to enjoy Sunday first — 6-2 in the Saturday makeup, 4-1 in the nightcap. In back-to-back weekends, the Red Sox have won five of six from the Yankees, Boston’s measuring stick for generations regardless of the standings.
Brayan Bello didn’t just match his seven innings at Yankee Stadium last Sunday, he bettered them, fanning eight and getting 16 swings and misses with stuff showing more bite across the board. With runners in scoring position against him, New York went 0 for 10. That included half his eight strikeouts, and the only ball New York got out of the infield was Anthony Rizzo’s 403-foot fly that Jarren Duran basket caught by the bullpen, part of one of the team’s better defensive performances of the year.
“I know what is at stake [against the Yankees] and I know what the fans expect from us,” Bello told reporters. “For me to be able to pitch on that stage is huge.”
The schedule rarely allows a pitcher to face the Yankees in back-to-back starts, but it can be noted that the last Red Sox to submit such a run against New York was one already well associated with Bello: Pedro Martínez, who struck out 25 across two eight-inning starts in May 2001. Let your mind run wild with that.
It is the signature eight days of a young career, if not that of a baseball operations department who hasn’t developed a high-end starter in 15 years. Of course, the depth of New York’s slump is such that they were 0 for 14 against Nick Pivetta. Chris Martin closed them out twice. They had four hits in a bullpen game started by Kaleb Ort, for goodness sakes.
As Aaron Boone noted from a gloomy Yankees clubhouse, the story of their struggles without Aaron Judge — they’re 4-8 since he busted his toe at Dodger Stadium — is somewhat overblown. They’re a $280 million monster which still has Giancarlo Stanton, DJ LeMahieu, Rizzo, and Josh Donaldson in its lineup.
In order, they’re in slumps of 5 for 41, 15 for 90, 4 for 48, and 4 for 33. That’s a combined .132 from the majority of their two through five hitters. Like it couldn’t last in a more frugally built Red Sox lineup, it won’t last there, but that’s somebody else’s problem given Boston doesn’t see New York again until mid-August. (When they’ll probably again play on Sunday Night Baseball.)
The Red Sox instead head to Minnesota with those most volatile of compounds: Momentum and hope. Lest we forget we’re only 11 days removed from a listless, fightless team starting a “the Bible says homosexuality is a sin” journeyman in the middle of Pride month. Or, for that matter, that between these two Yankees series the Red Sox couldn’t solve Colorado, which spent this weekend getting clobbered in suburban Atlanta.
The Sox went lose three, win three, lose four, win three back in April. They won eight in a row and lost six of seven in May. Win four, lose four on the west coast. Eight losses in 11 before these four in a row. And now Houck, one of the starting pitchers who helped nose this rotation to among the league’s better ones since the middle of May — “if you pitch, you’re going to have a chance,” manager Alex Cora told reporters last week — is in a holding pattern pending possible surgery.
What was a 5.5-game gap behind the Yankees before these six games is now two. They picked up three games on the Blue Jays and Astros. No series sweep is ever nothing, no matter the competition.
But we can’t lose that in and of itself, the sweeps that came before it didn’t keep these Red Sox from where they are. Baltimore has also won six of nine. The Angels, seven of 10. They’ve got another hole in their rotation, and they’re still just No. 6 in a three-get-in American League wild card race.
Say what you will about playoff odds, but Fangraphs gives 10 other teams a better chance at October given the relative strength of the AL East, and Boston’s relative strength within it.
Having a good series isn’t the problem for the mediocre team, even one whose future looks a little bit brighter and solidified this morning. Having another one is.
It’s only taken 72 games of the 2023 season to make that a story we know all too well.
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