Before the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees meet in their best-of-five American League Division Series, which is really the AL East Series, I wanted to review what happened to the Boston Red Sox in their wild-card series against the Yankees that served as the first AL East elimination round.
My wife, Barb, asked if I had a preference for who won between the Red Sox and Yankees. I told her I didn’t, but I did want to see Adley Rutschman play well, feeling that strange pull for a former Oriole.
I said it just before Rutschman was given at least partial blame for Boston’s collapse in the bottom of the sixth of a 9-2 rout by the Yankees, who swept the best-of-three series by outscoring the Red Sox, 18-2.
With the Yankees leading 2-1 on Wednesday, Garrett Crochet was brought in to pitch for the first time since April 25th, when he defeated the Orioles. Rutschman had never caught him and when Spencer Jones chased strike three on a ball in the dirt, it bounced off Rutschman’s chest protector and to his left. He picked up the ball, took an extra step and fired a strike to first. Jones was called out, but the call was overturned on a challenge.
The reason Jones was safe was that first baseman Wilson Contreras took the throw while standing on the back of the bag and toward the line. He didn’t move to the front of the bag and give Rutschman a target.
In the third inning, Contreras wandered off the bag on a line drive up the middle by Ryan McMahon that shortstop Trevor Story nearly caught in the air before the ball escaped his glove. He threw a perfect strike to first and Contreras caught it feet from the bag. He’s no Freddie Freeman or Pete Alonso on defense.
Rutschman, though, took the heat for Jones’ reaching first and then threw a ball that tailed away from second and into the outfield when Jones stole second. Jones ended up on third, and everything seemed to go wrong after that — the icing being a three-run homer by Cody Bellinger that made the score 8-1.
Rutschman was 1-for-8 in the two games and was outplayed by his counterpart, Austin Wells. To be fair, it was just two games, and Boston was thoroughly outplayed by the Yankees, losing 9-0 and 9-2. Boston manager Chad Tracy was outmanaged by New York’s Aaron Boone, who allowed a dominant Cam Schlittler throw 117 pitches in 6 1/3 innings in Game 1. Schlittler allowed two hits, struck out 10 and wasn’t the victim of analytics.
Tracy had a quick trigger on both Payton Tolle — 4 1/3 innings, 5 hits, 1 run, and Sonny Gray — 4 2/3 innings, 6 hits, 2 runs. He followed each with left-hander Erik Miller, who gave up a home run to Ben Rice, the first batter he faced, on Tuesday night, and a run-scoring single to Bellinger, the first batter he faced, on Wednesday night, with that run being charged to Gray.
Gray, whose stats improve the third time he goes through a batting order, wanted Tracy to trust him; he had thrown only 70 pitches. Tracy probably regretted that he didn’t.
Contreras didn’t speak directly to Gray’s removal, but he did say this about baseball’s data-driven environment.
“It’s not enough when you have talent, or you have data, or you have computers telling you what to do, because this is baseball,” Contreras told reporters. “The data is here to help us, but at the end of the day, you’re going to need experience and veteran guys to win games. There’s a lot of stuff that I would like to say, but I’ll stay [with] that.”
Contreras was asked if the Red Sox rely too much on data?
“If you watch the game,” he said to reporters. “If you watch the game …”
Watching the Red Sox in the two games made me think that the Orioles aren’t as far behind as the final records — 87-75 for Boston, 79-82 for Baltimore. That both Tracy and Craig Albernaz are too reliant on analytics. And that Mike Elias made the right call in trading Rutschman for the talent he received in return — right-handed pitchers Anthony Eyanson and Kyson Witherspoon, outfielders Enddy Azocar and Harold Rivas, and catcher Carlos Narváez.
And while I wanted to see Rutschman play better, I thought the Yankees looked awfully good, and without Aaron Judge. They appear to be the beast of the East. We’ll soon find out.