NEW YORK — Remarkable what two playoff games can expose.
In this blink-and-you-missed-it American League wild-card series that pitted the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees against each other for the second consecutive year, the Yankees’ pair of victories – 9-0 in Game 1 and 9-2 in Game 2 Wednesday, Sept. 30 – illuminated the significant gulf between the 93-win Yankees and 87-win Red Sox.
That was obvious enough when the home team shut out the visitors for the first 14 innings of the series.
Yet for the Red Sox, these two games felt heavier, that they weren’t actually right there with the Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays, the East trio looking down on the flailing plebes dotting the rest of the AL.
Judge
No, after the Red Sox mismanaged and meekly hit their way out of Yankee Stadium and into a winter of indeterminate length, a deeper question must be pondered:
Was their feel-good, improbable summer of winning simply a mirage?
Now, they certainly weren’t as bad as the 10-17 club that got World Series-winning manager Alex Cora fired in April. And absolutely not as good as the guys who went 26-5 across June and July and posted a 15-game winning streak as they went from the cellar to firmly in control of the second AL wild card.
But the questions they have going into a likely lockout-extended winter are many, and significant.
Can Roman Anthony stay healthy?
The hitting prodigy they signed to a $130 million extension just weeks into his career aggravated and worsened a hand sprain that affects his wrist, as well. He played in just 56 games this season.
Is there anywhere close to enough offense in this organization?
Red Sox club president Craig Breslow bemoaned the many injuries bedeviling his club late in the year as he broke down Anthony’s hand/wrist issue Wednesday. Yet Triston Casas, Anthony, Mickey Gasper and Eli White likely would not have made a material difference in this series.
Kind of like sot spots in their lineup manned by Nick Sogard, Nate Eaton and Jahmai Jones in Game 2, along with their feast-or-famine third baseman, Caleb Durbin.
Is Tracy championship-caliber as a dugout leader?
The amount of unforced errors he made were staggering for just a two-game series. Hooking lefty Payton Tolle after 4 1/3 innings and veteran right-hander Sonny Gray after 4 ⅔ were the type of overanalyzed, front-office driven game calls that are a pox on the game.
Believe it – there were plenty of first-guesses on these calls before Erik Miller gave up the crucial Ben Rice Game 1 home run, and then almost exactly by Cody Bellinger’s crucial RBI single in Game 2 – both hits extending Yankee leads from 1-0 to 2-0 in taut pitching duels.
The veterans in the clubhouse were not pleased.
“I’m the best pitcher in the American League going through the order for a third time. I think that’s a fact,” says Gray, who won 18 games for Boston and worked six or more innings in 22 of his 29 starts.
“I would’ve liked to live or die with me in that moment. I felt strong, confident.”
Nope, 4 2/3 innings was enough for him on this night, with Tracy explaining that because the Red Sox didn’t have a comfortable lead, “you feel like you’ve got to be aggressive and go.”
To Erik Miller?
First baseman Willson Contreras, a longtime catcher, made a “zip-my-lip” gesture when asked about some of the maneuvers. Yet he said plenty.
“It’s not enough when you have talent, or data, or computers telling you what to do. This is baseball,” Contreras told reporters. “The data is here to help us.
“But you need experience and to bet on your guys to win games.”
Instead, Tracy and the staff that helped him game prep put all their chips on Miller two nights in a row. And inserted recovering ace Garrett Crochet into the sixth inning after that – and he looked like he hadn’t pitched since April 25, which he hadn’t.
No outs, four earned runs, 8-1, go home.
Heck, Boston’s top set-up man , Garrett Whitlock, didn’t even appear in the series until they were seven runs down in an elimination game. The definition of poor managing.
That said, Tracy deserves a fair amount of slack. Almost every rookie playoff manager – from Dave Roberts to A.J. Hinch to Aaron Boone – gets schooled in their postseason baptism. Tracy can get better, and October gaffes don’t cancel out the respect gleaned as Tracy earned the permanent manager tag.
The grander question remains what the organization will look like under Breslow, who on the same day as Tracy was anointed permanent manager had his contract options picked up through 2030. It was a vindicating moment for Breslow, who took significant heat for firing Cora in April.
The Hot Sox Summer put those memories in the rear view. Yet the offensive deficiencies resulting from Alex Bregman’s departure surfaced at the worst possible time.
How will Breslow navigate roster-building in the post-lockout landscape? How many coaches who came with Tracy in the April staff blowout will be retained, and who will decide on staff composition?
Will playoff games be lost because of the type of tortured, seemingly overanalyzed decisions that took the team’s fate out of the hands of Tolle and Gray and into Miller’s?
No, there’s plenty of potential pitfalls for a club that hasn’t won its division since 2018.
Perhaps this season truly was a steppingstone. Yet as they cleared out of Yankee Stadium, there was an unsettling feeling that a summer hot streak was as good as it gets for the Red Sox.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Was Red Sox's summer of love a mirage? Yankees beatdown exposes Boston
