Commentary

The Red Sox need saving, and Chris Sale feels like the last line of defense

Chris Sale allowed just four earned runs and fanned 21 in his first three games this season, but Tampa will be a significant step up. Adam Glanzman/Getty Images

By Jon Couture

September 1, 2021

4 minutes to read

Wednesday was already going to be the most significant Chris Sale Day of the 2021 season. The Red Sox need him not only to be their ace on the mound against the American League’s best team, but the fuming firestarter who helped get them over the line three years ago from the dugout.

After Tuesday, when Xander Bogaerts became the latest caught in a mushrooming COVID-19 outbreak? It feels like a cliff’s edge. A Hail Mary, though at this point, it’ll feel like a prayer answered for Sale to simply get to the mound without a positive test derailing it.

The COVID count at press time, all happening since Friday: Kiké Hernández, Christian Arroyo, Matt Barnes, Martín Pérez, Josh Taylor (a close contact who is quarantining, which likely means he’s unvaccinated), Hirokazu Sawamura (whose positive was announced before Tuesday’s 8-5 loss), Bogaerts, and three staffers.

The Globe’s Peter Abraham put it bluntly: “Nearly a quarter of their roster is made up of players who should be playing for Triple A Worcester.”

The addition of Bogaerts to sick bay after a first-inning RBI single appeared to drain their will to fight. Tampa hung six runs on them an inning later, thanks in part to one Hunter Renfroe throw bounding through the infield to the dugout, one pitch in the dirt screaming past Christian Vázquez to the backstop, and one bloop landing between two fielders and bounding away.

Of course, the real ones out there know that’s been happening for six weeks. We’re just relieved Travis Shaw and Rafael Devers mostly stayed in the zone as they struck out as the potential tying run in the ninth.

Legacies, in the end, are just what we remember, and I’m fascinated to see where 2021’s ends up. The answer, of course, depends largely on where we go from here. It’s Sept. 1, and the Red Sox still sit in playoff position — two behind the Yankees (who’ve lost four straight) to host the wild-card game, and even in the loss column with Oakland to play in it.

Will these Red Sox be the group that won us back for four months, pulling game after game from the fire?

Will they be the team let down by their bosses, who wouldn’t crack the sacrosanct luxury tax while the AL got better around them?

Or will they be the team let down by themselves, the reluctance of some to get vaccinated ultimately dooming them all?

Seeming everyone talking about the outbreak immediately brings up the Red Sox not reaching baseball’s 85 percent vaccination threshold. It’s an understandable connection, especially given how illogical much of the hesitancy seems, but please keep it in its proper context.

One of the first MLB teams to hit 85 percent was the Yankees, who despite that have had 14 players land on the COVID list this season, many via breakthrough infections. The NFL’s Tennessee Titans are 90-percent vaccinated, but have nine players in protocols.

Red Sox vaccine hesitancy certainly isn’t helping, but the race to treat it as the source of their problems is largely speculative until someone proves otherwise.

“I’m not going to go into details with this, but I’m not as frustrated with the situation because of knowing everything else about it,” manager Alex Cora told reporters when asked about frustrations that Boston’s low vaccination rate may have sparked the outbreak. “I’ve been saying all along, it’s their choice, and you have to respect that. It just happened to us. I’m not as frustrated as if it was a different way, let’s put it that way.”

That’s been his public refrain, same as “we’ll be fine” was as the 2019 season went down the drain. His 2021 team has still overachieved, though they’re down to a 90-win pace, but they’re increasingly proving themselves unworthy of playoff baseball for reasons having nothing to do with CBT or COVID-19.

Forget the skeleton crew. Devers straight muffing a routine grounder Monday was straight Little League stuff, and key in the loss. So was Vázquez failing to block a strike three, the latest in a long line of fundamental things he’s not doing.

“It’s all going to come down to adversity,” Pivetta told reporters Monday. “There’s no room to really let that affect us in any way. We just have to go out and play baseball. That’s what it comes down to. Once you get out on that field, everything else is kind of white noise and you focus on the task at hand.”

Of course, Pivetta’s ERA is nearly 6.00 since his 10-strikeout gem at Oakland on the Fourth of July. Message, messenger, and all that.

Which brings us back to Sale and Wednesday night. Failure is a snowball rolling down a hill, and these Red Sox appear prone to pressing, if not have a full-on confidence problem. Hearing Kyle Schwarber bring up how much his new team will miss Bogaerts’s “presence” rang more alarm bells on top of the loss of a talented mid-order bat.

“We’ve got to keep going,” Cora said. “Like I said [Monday], and I’m going to keep saying it, they’re not going to stop the tournament for the Red Sox, we know that. We’ve got to figure this out, show up tomorrow, play good baseball.”

In deeds (and words, if he chooses), the wiry lefty can be a rallying point both tonight and next week, when he lines up against Tampa again. The Rays have won 13 of 14, 24 of 30, and nine of 10 head-to-head with the Red Sox, the reigning AL champs asserting themselves as the threat we all thought.

Boston’s not going to catch them. But they can hold off Oakland and Seattle, where they visit in two weeks. They can win amid an outbreak, just like the Yankees did to them. Anything less is excuse making.

No better place to start, the calendar turned, than Sale. Who feels like the last line of defense before this previously feel-good season enters free fall.