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With an attention-grabbing, win-grabbing style, Red Sox visit Yankees at the perfect time
When the Yankees came to Fenway on June 14, New York was 14 games up on the Red Sox. When the sides reconvene Friday night, the gap will be 5.5.
COMMENTARY
On Wednesday night, sitting at my fifth game in less than a year and a half, not long from buying another $35 scarf (and talking my very-much-growing son down from a jersey to a hat), I reflected on my sudden journey to becoming a Revolution guy.
Don’t worry, this is still a Red Sox space, one keenly aware the club handled its business in Miami as a lead-in to a delightfully timed first Yankee Stadium trip of the year. I will get there.
Soccer pit stop first. Promise it’ll be quick.
I didn’t come into this cold. Just coming into my sports fandom when the United States qualified for the 1990 World Cup, I was 14 in 1994 — squarely the age when science says you’ll likely develop the tastes that define your life. Major League Soccer arrived two years later. Two years after that, I was wearing a tie-dyed Revs shirt in my senior photos.
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Yes, it was one of multiple outfits. No, you can’t see.
Over the next decade, though, my interest waned. The team entered a renaissance in the 2000s, but lost four MLS Cups in six years. More pressingly, they struggled to get even 15,000 at Gillette, which back then could almost fit 70K. I pointedly remember swearing it off after a midweek friendly against Celtic in 2006. I’d watch from afar, but I wouldn’t go again until the team got that right-sized home the league was trending toward.
Fast forward 17 years. No stadium, but a son who’d chosen soccer as his sport. (He was meh on baseball, but watches the Sox. I’ll take it.) I had a rare Saturday off, and the team was home. It’s an easy drive for us to Foxborough. Tickets were pro sports cheap; I didn’t even know the parking was free yet. Let’s give it a shot.
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That was the first of the five. I will resist the urge to go on; the latest from Hayden Bird is more intellingent than anything I’m going to bleat anyway.
The point is sometimes, it just takes the hook. The hook fights through the baggage and forces fresh eyes. The hook is a chance to catch your attention. To let ’em know that things are different now, even if they’re not what they were.
In the Red Sox universe, the Yankees are always a hook.
As noted above, this one’s coming at the right time.
“We never stopped playing,” manager Alex Cora told reporters Thursday afternoon, after his team blew a 2-0 lead in the eighth, a 4-2 lead in the 11th, and nearly blew a 6-4 in the 12th. “It was a grinder, but a good one. It’s not that we played sloppy; they just played hard, too.”
Boston’s single runs, in the first and sixth innings, each came after double steals. Jarren Duran didn’t score after going first to third on a … grounder to first … but he did save the game by throwing out Jesus Sanchez at the plate in the ninth.
The regulars around here will tell you that’s pretty much how it works these days.
The first two wins were nowhere near as suspenseful, Kutter Crawford and Brayan Bello each getting right against a Marlins lineup very good at letting pitchers do that.
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A sweep of a team they should have swept. All while Cincinnati was walking into Yankee Stadium and sweeping the hosts at home. New York booed after its Yankees did not lead the Reds for any of 27 innings, and made it three weeks without so much as a series win.
When Alex Verdugo showed out at Fenway on June 14, New York was 14 games up on the Red Sox. When the sides reconvene Friday night, the gap will be 5.5. Boston’s won 12 of 16, while New York’s lost 13 of 17, including nine of 12 at home.
“If you think [Cora] is going to do anything but keep the accelerator floored against an opponent Boston stole nine bases against the last time they played,” the New York Post’s Joel Sherman wrote on Thursday afternoon, “then you have not paid attention over the years how much Cora loves to live under the Yankees’ skin.”
That Sunday night win completed a Red Sox statement week, four wins in six against two of the best teams in the sport. It also appeared to cement that Red Sox-Yankees is again something after a couple dead years. (Dead enough that the teams, which never trade with each other, traded with each other.)
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Since June 14, the Yankees have the worst ERA in baseball (6.69), allowing 31 homers — one off the bottom — in 17 games. Outside of Aaron Judge, the offense has been a disaster, with Anthony Volpe (.184 and demoted from leadoff Thursday), DJ LeMahieu (.176), Gleyber Torres (.184), and Verdugo (.175) all below .200 and Soto — who homered Thursday — barely above it (.204) while walking in nearly a third of his plate appearances.
The popular conjecture is that stolen-base pantsing broke New York a bit. The more logical thought, just, is that getting Gerrit Cole back took the foot off the gas ever slightly. He goes Saturday against Josh Winckowski, the Sox getting Tanner Houck and Crawford on either side of the series.
Probably a narrative where none exists, as is the custom across a six-month baseball marathon. What’s less debatable is that this weekend, to a degree they rarely have this season, the Red Sox will have the region’s attention. There are no shadows in the Bronx, certainly not when the team is hot and the pinstripes are reeling.
These remain, of course, largely the same Red Sox who were gravitationally attached to .500 three weeks ago. Who three weeks before that followed their exultory sweep at Tropicana Field by losing 9 of 15. They are still simply bobbing each side of the wild-card line, discussion of which remains ridiculous given we’ve not even gotten Duran into the All-Star Game yet.
But they are, as we keep saying, proving themselves something. I’ve given Houck short shrift. Connor Wong, for whom we could also craft an All-Star case. David Hamilton. Even Greg Weissert, part of the New York return in that Verdugo trade.
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I hear you. You hooked are chatty, and I get it. I was going to be here anyway, but they’re hooking me too.
After this weekend, there’s a chance there’ll be more of us. Yankees series can do that.
Genuine surprise teams can too.
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