ALDS Game 4: I Know What You're Doing This Friday!
Boston beats Tampa, advances to ALCS! Plus, notes on E-Rod, Rafael Devers and the big inning, Kevin Cash's hook problems, and the most important question of all: Can The Red Sox Win The World Series?
Well, I hope you don’t have Friday evening plans. The Red Sox pulled off the unthinkable last night, beating the Tampa Rays for the third time in a row to win the ALDS and secure a spot in the American League Championship Series. Which starts Friday. Clear your calendar.
Baseball is a strange game. On one hand, over a full season it’s pretty easy to predict. Good teams will mostly be good. Sometimes great, sometimes just okay, but generally good is good. Put the pressure of the post-season and the vagaries of a short series on it though and you start to get some crazy results.
The Rays won 100 games this year.
Didn’t matter.
The Rays out-scored the Red Sox and gave up about 100 fewer runs on the season than Boston.
Didn’t matter.
The Rays finished eight games ahead of the Red Sox and won the season series 11-8.
Didn’t matter.
Once Enrique Hernandez hit that fly ball to left field and Danny Santana (of all people) crossed the plate, the Red Sox were the better team in all the ways people care about.
Let’s get into it, but first, quickly, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to Sox Outsider! It’s free, it’s fun, it’s informative, it’s a newsletter about the Boston Red Sox, and who doesn’t want to read that right now? (Don’t answer that question please.) So subscribe, and if you already are subscribed, thank you. I sincerely appreciate it.
In a two week span, the Red Sox have eliminated the Toronto Blue Jays, the New York Yankees, and now, after last night’s win, the Tampa Rays. Boston’s next opponent will be the winner of the Astros/White Sox series, which currently sits at two games to one for Houston. While we sit back, relax, and pretend we have it all under control, let’s think back, all the way to last night, before the Red Sox had defeated the Rays in the ALDS. I know, it’s seems like a century ago.
Coming into the game the Red Sox had some serious momentum. I’m not a big believer in momentum in baseball, but the fact that the Red Sox were up two games to one and Game Four was at Fenway Park sure made things easier. Boston could lose and then go to a Game Five. The Rays had no such luxury. The other thing the Red Sox had in their favor was Eduardo Rodriguez.
Eduardo Rodriguez
Rodriguez had been knocked around by the Rays in Game One of the series, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to step up and give Boston some innings they desperately needed. Tampa was scraping the dregs of their bullpen, so the mere fact the Red Sox had a bonafide starter to throw out there was an advantage.
As it turned out, Eduardo was better than just an innings eater. He was at his very best. He gave Boston five innings of two run ball, allowing just three hits with no walks and six strikeouts. And even that line looks deceptive, as Rodriguez’s runs came after a double that probably should’ve been caught by Rafael Devers and Kevin Kiermaier, who scored on a Wander Franco homer given up by Tanner Houck.
Rodriguez was pounding the strike zone all evening, and the Rays just couldn’t square him up. There was one moment though where it felt like maybe things were going to get away from him. It was the top of the third inning and Austin Meadows was leading off. Rodriguez got ahead of him 0-2, fouled one off, then took three balls to fill up the count. From there, Meadows fouled off 10 straight pitches. Rodriguez threw the proverbial kitchen sink at him, but Meadows fouled it off, too. The at-bat took forever, and in a 0-0 elimination game, everything feels vital. The Rays were battling hard for a base runner, but Rodriguez wouldn’t give in. He kept coming into the zone, pitch after pitch after pitch. Finally, on pitch 17, Rodriguez threw a beautiful changeup at the bottom of the zone and Meadows swung and missed.
You would think that at-bat would’ve thrown off Rodriguez’s pitch count something fierce, but not only did E-Rod win the AB, he then got Mike Zunino to pop out on two pitches, and then got Kevin Kiermaier to fly out on one pitch! Seventeen pitches for the first out, three pitches for the next two. And then in the next half inning the Red Sox dropped a fiver on ‘em.
The Five Spot
So about that. The Red Sox have been leaving runners on base all series long. Thing is, that’s not a bad thing. Yes, it’s very annoying when it happens, and it feels like a huge missed opportunity. And often it is! But good teams put runners on base. Often they don’t score, but putting runners on base is a good thing. It wears down the opposing pitchers, it puts pressure on the defense to make a mistake, and it does other things I can’t think of now because I’m tired. But trust me, it’s good. It leads to runs being scored.
In the playoffs, though, throw all that mumbo-jumbo out. It’s all about results. Get runners on and then get them in. Leaving runners on base, especially in scoring position in a playoff game is a sin. The Red Sox were about to do just that in the third inning last night. Christian Vazquez singled and Kyle Schwarber walked. With two outs, up stepped Rafael Devers. Here was the first pitch thrown to him by Shane McClanahan.
Devers did exactly what you’re supposed to do with that pitch, namely this:
That’s one of those homers that’s hit straight away to center field and so when watching on TV it looks like a pop-up off the bat. The angle is weird and you have no depth perception, but when you see Devers standing there after his swing and the pitcher’s reaction, you start to get a sense of what just happened. What just happened was Devers hit one 404 feet at 108 mph off the bat, and he picked up two runners on base. What was a 0-0 game became a 3-0 game in one Devers laser beam.
So let’s introduce to you now the Kevin Cash Pull-o-meter. It tracks when Cash should pull his pitcher and put in a reliever.
Situation 1: Devers cannon shot homer after two base runners and two outs makes it 3-0, Boston
Kevin Cash Pull-o-meter says: Eh, cum see cum saa, could go either way
What did Cash Do? Left McClanahan in
Situation 2: Two pitches later, Xander Bogaerts singles.
Kevin Cash Pull-o-meter says: probably time to move those cheeks, Kev-bo
What did Cash Do? Left McClanahan in
Situation 3: Alex Verdugo doubles, scoring Bogaerts
Kevin Cash Pull-o-meter says: Your seat is officially on fire, feel the heat, get up and go get the kid
What did Cash Do? Left McClanahan in
Situation 4: JD Martinez singles, scoring Verdugo
Kevin Cash Pull-o-meter says: Pull him or we’re coming after you with pitchforks
What did Cash Do? Pulled McClanahan
Cash is a very good manager, but in this situation it felt a little like he reacted too slowly to what was going on. He could’ve pulled McClanahan anytime including before the Devers homer as Devers was the fourth batter he was to face. Instead, Cash left McClanahan in to give up four straight hits and five runs. I mean, thanks and all, but isn’t one of the benefits of having the World’s Deepest Bullpen supposed to be that you can stop the bleeding quickly? And this was an elimination game so you’d think Cash would have had a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ option available just in case. Nope.
It felt a bit like Cash goofed there and cost his team some runs, runs that ended up being pretty important. In retrospect, maybe he should’ve gone out there with a boombox before Devers came up and blasted this:
More
There’s so much more to discuss, including Garrett Whitlock (wow), Alex Cora going to Ryan Brasier over Whitlock in the 8th (WHY??), the state of the Red Sox pitching staff (yikes), and a billion more items before the Sox start the ALCS, but I’m tired and this is long enough, so we’ll save them for tomorrow. In the meantime, there’s a question that’s been burning a hole in my head since Enrique’s sac fly, and it’s this:
Can This Team Do The Thing?
Alex Cora said in a post-game interview that nobody expected much from this team, that everyone doubted them going back to Spring Training. I guess that depends on what you consider doubt, but there probably weren’t a lot of analysts who picked the Red Sox to make the ALCS this season. I know of zero people who picked the Red Sox to beat the Rays in the ALDS, myself included. I’d have been less surprised by a Rays sweep than by the Red Sox winning in four games.
So can the Red Sox win the 2021 World Series? At this point anyone who says anything but an unqualified YES is wrong. They’re not going to be the favorites, not in the ALCS against either possible opponent, and not in any potential World Series matchup either (maybe against Atlanta) but they weren’t the favorites against New York and as we just discussed they weren’t favorites against Tampa either, and look where they are now.
But put all that matchup stuff away for now. We’ll get to it later. For now, focus on this: there wasn’t another team in the AL better than the Rays this season and the Red Sox just beat them. That doesn’t guarantee Boston anything in an ALCS, but it does show what this team is capable of doing when they’re really firing on all - okay, most - cylinders.
Right now they’re winning in the way we discussed here at Sox Outsider at the outset of their Wild Card race, namely the offense is cooking with straight fire. They scored 26 runs on Rays pitching in the four game series, and the Rays have one of the best if not the best pitching staffs in baseball. And the Red Sox didn’t really score 26 runs in four games. No. They did it in three games after getting shut out in Game One. That’s almost a nine run per game average against the Rays over the last three games. That’s some serious hitting.
And it wasn’t fluky, or at least it was earned in the moment. The Red Sox crushed the ball off Tampa pitching. Just in last night’s game there were 19 batted balls hit at 100 mph or greater. The Red Sox had 12 of them! The results in the previous two games were similar. The Red Sox didn’t get lucky. They didn’t fluke into beating Tampa. They bludgeoned the Rays. With a baseball bat. They crushed the crap out of them. That the games were close was a tribute to the Rays defense and positioning, and probably had something to do with the Red Sox lack of those things, as well. But offense for offense, the Red Sox lapped ‘em.
So can the Red Sox win the World Series? If they can beat the Rays like that? Well, you tell me.
I’ll be back soon (maybe tomorrow, maybe I’ll sleep) with more on the ALDS, and the upcoming ALCS. In the meantime, thanks so much for reading and subscribing.
Totally Agree
I expected TB to give us Tuberculosis in 3 Thumpings ...... the 1st Game looked like it !
But after that the Bats caught Fire & then all sorts started happening !
Even in the 8th tonight, man on 2nd no outs, tied game, I thought TB wins in 5, but NO ...... Whitlock trots on & puts out The Dumpster Fire
Today is about celebrating another extraordinary Game, Series & Season
The Legend of this Team is growing by the day :
KikeMania is now definitely a Thing
Whitlockian has become an adjective
Vaskyphobia is growing like Out of Control Fungus
Covid 21 may just be the intense desire to wear Red Socks & cheer on The Team that takes you strange places ?
I love this team. I do not love the 8th inning right now though. I am glad that all that happened in the last two 8th innings was to tie the game. Giving the Sox two chances to walk it off gives some amazingly strong emotions and vibes of invincibility and grind. Feeling those things in the postseason makes a team scary, especially an offense.
Can't say enough about Whitlock. Unbelievable. Really the whole team was unbelievable this series. Kikè and Cousin Verdugo are hot at the same time and this lineup feels deep enough to run all the way. My hopes are up to a scary level right now.
The one and only thing that would make me feel better is if I believed that Chris Sale was actually Chris Sale.