ALCS Game 5: Obliterated

Notes and thoughts on the Red Sox getting beat up and down the field in Game Five, including oh who cares this sucks

The way baseball sets up the ALCS, teams can lose up to three times and still advance. The Red Sox just burned their third loss. The Astros took some revenge on the Red Sox for the beatings in Games Two and Three, taking it to Boston hard, 9-1. The Red Sox are a game away from elimination.

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We’ll get into some specifics below, but the Red Sox simply didn’t do nearly enough yesterday. They didn’t hit, they didn’t pitch. You can point to individual players and say ‘we need more from you’ but there were too many breakdowns to pin it on any one player. Game Four could be pinned, fairly or not, on the missed call by home plate umpire Laz Diaz. If Diaz makes the right call, the Red Sox go into the bottom of the ninth inning tied 2-2. Do they win? I don’t know. Maybe they lose anyway, but we’ll never know because they had the chance stolen from them by an incompetent umpire. Yesterday wasn’t that. At all. Yesterday the Red Sox got their butts kicked. Just beat, and beat badly.

We’ve seen how valuable momentum is in this series, which is to say not valuable at all. The Astros won the first game so momentum for them! But the Red Sox destroyed Houston in the next two and looked poised to pull a gentleman’s sweep. But then the Astros kicked the Red Sox’ butts in the next two. It seems like Houston has it all under control right now, and maybe they do, but we’ve seen how quickly things have changed course. The Red Sox aren’t out of this at all. But they’re close.

Chris Sale

Sale started for the Red Sox and after his previous start I didn’t have a lot of confidence he would be effective. I was wrong. He was about the only Red Sox pitcher who was effective. His pitching line has an extra run attached courtesy of Ryan Brasier’s coming in and setting the inning and indeed the game on fire. But even considering that, Sale was impressive.

He commanded his fastball better than his last outing, throwing it up in the zone and mostly around the edges with more velocity than we’ve seen from him in a while. You can see the fastballs in red and their locations at the top of the zone and inside to right handed hitters.

Red is fastball, yellow is slider, green is changeup

It’s ironic that the Red Sox finally got a good start out of their ace and they got their doors blown off anyway. Yes, part of that was on Sale, who gave up a two run double to Yordan Alvarez before exiting. Part of that is also on Brasier, and part is on manager Alex Cora, who could have either walked Alvarez to get to Carlos Correa (Alvarez was destroying the Sox last night while Correa was largely silent), or opted to bring in a different pitcher to face Alvarez, as Sale’s pitch count was in the mid-80s and he hadn’t gone this deep in a game in a long time.

Despite all that, if we’re looking for positive outcomes, Sale is about it for the Red Sox yesterday. Unless the Sox come back in the series (and they totally could; more on that below) this was Sale’s final start for the 2021 Red Sox. Sale has work to do to find his changeup and harness it, as it’s that third killer pitch that makes him a true ace pitcher. But he’s been able to do that in the past, and despite his not throwing it much yesterday, at least the location of his changeups was pretty good. Baby steps there. The whole start leaves me with optimism for 2022 or potentially another outing in Game Seven.

The Offense

Speaking of something positive, not the offense! The Red Sox were thoroughly shut down by Framber Valdez, a pitcher Boston unloaded on in his previous start this series. Whether it was Valdez pitching better, the Red Sox hitting worse, or a combination of the two, the results were quite bad for the Red Sox. Whether Sale pitched great or good or badly almost didn’t matter as the Red Sox simply failed to hit.

In failing to do so they wasted a great opportunity to get to a tired and weak back end of the Astros bullpen. Were they able to at least build up Valdez’s pitch count a bit, they likely would’ve faced some very hittable pitchers in the sixth, seventh, or even eighth inning with a chance to do some damage. But they weren’t able to do anything against Valdez. Like, nothing. They didn’t get their first hit until the fifth inning, and their first run didn’t come until a Rafael Devers solo shot in the eighth. Somehow Valdez was still in at that point, which, frankly, is unconscionable.

The entire Sox offense was pitiful all night long. And it wasn’t just Game Four (part of the reason I’m not entirely willing to put all the credit on Valdez). Beginning in Game Four, Boston’s hitters went 14 straight innings without scoring a run. You can’t win that way. Complain about Cora’s Martin Perez fetish and Ryan Brasier’s misunderstanding of the term “relief pitcher” all you like, but if the Red Sox don’t score none of that matters. In this context there’s no difference between losing 1-0 and losing 12-0.

This team works if they’re scoring boatloads of runs. They’re not set up to win low scoring games, to hold late close leads or to nail down wins with good defense. It’s bludgeon the opposing pitching staff or go home and play golf. The Astros scored five runs in the second game, which is a good amount, but nobody remembers that or cares because the Red Sox scored nine. If the lineup doesn’t show up, they have little to no shot. The lineup didn’t show up in Games Four or Five and now the Red Sox are down three games to two in the ALCS.

Where the Red Sox stand right now

They’re in a tough spot, but they’re also not. They need to win two games against the Astros to move on to the World Series. Guess what? They’ve already done that. They have Nate Eovaldi and Eduardo Rodriguez (likely) going for them in Games Six and Seven, the same two starting pitchers who dominated the Astros in Games Two and Three. They have their best relief pitchers in Garrett Whitlock and Tanner Houck available to go in Game Six if needed. Chris Sale should be available for an inning in Game Seven. Nick Pivetta should be available for both games. The Red Sox are set up fine on the pitching side.

I’m not saying it’ll be easy. The more likely scenario is they’ll lose one of the next two games and their season will end. That’s the mathematics of it. But who gives a crap what the math says? The math didn’t have the Sox in the ALCS (and to be fair neither did I). The Sox aren’t out until they’re out and right now they’re not out. This team has surprised and surprised at seemingly every turn, both for good and bad. I’d be shocked if they went out with a whimper.

Game Six is this tomorrow, Friday, at 8:00pm. I’ll certainly have something for you after that. If you’re not subscribed yet, please hit that button and I’ll be back Saturday morning with a recap of Game Six and hopefully a preview of Game Seven.