I’m so conflicted about this whole thing. My mind is absolute racing after this loss.
Let’s start with the things that make me mad. The Red Sox straight up didn’t show up to this game. The offense was non-existent,
the defense looked like last year’s World Series Yankees embarrassingly bad, it was just such half-hearted effort in a do-or-die game. Granted, it’s so hard to tell what’s trying to be cool, calm, and collected—not letting the moment get too emotional—and what’s just being extremely apathetic. It’s even harder with the tint of the lens on my glasses right now.
There is some good to take out of all of this, though. Every rebuilding team needs some postseason pain to make themselves stronger. This team was completely depleted on the offensive side of the ball, between guys getting extremely cold and being injured halfway to hell. It’s clear what’s needed this offseason and I somehow trust Craig Breslow to make the right moves to make this team better. We got the exhilarating heart palpitations and thrills of postseason baseball once again, even with the early crash. Frankly, we got some amount of hope that this team isn’t just made of luck and fairy dust.
It definitely feels salty and will for a while. I want the Yankees to crash out extremely hard, but I’m not sure when or how. But even with a rough exit to the postseason, people should be proud of the 2025 Boston Red Sox. They’re not the no-expectation team Alex Cora preened to the media they were, but they certainly weren’t World Series darlings. Seeing any game in October was not just a blessing, but hopefully just a taste of more to come.
Studs
Connelly Early (3.2 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 6 K)
Look, Early got screwed over by his defense and the baseball gods, plain and simple. There wasn’t much hard hit contact at all, no home runs given up. The Yankees tend to live and die by the long ball and to be beaten by small ball and stupid mistakes has to suck for a kids. who should hold his head high with his outing despite it all.
The Bullpen
For the lack of offense, to hold the Yankees to two hits in the final 4.1 frames of the game is all they could have done to keep this team alive in the series.
Duds
The Defense
In both losses of the series, the defense was such a weakness. It frankly looked like April defense. The Duran drop, the throwing errors, the Lowe miss at first, it all hurt tremendously.
The Offense
This offense got shut down by Cam Schlittler of all people. 8 innings of nothing but strikeouts and bloop contact. It’s clear this offseason depth offense has to get addressed because seeing how much they relied on Roman Anthony down the stretch doesn’t help.
Play of the Game
The defense was the goat of this one. They really let Early down and this didn’t help.
