Opening Day: The Good, The Bad, The More Bad
Red Sox lose 6-5 to the Yankees
Depending on your point of view, the fact that there are 161 more games left in the Red Sox season could be seen as a threat. Yesterday, on Opening Day in the Bronx, the Red Sox and Yankees combined for a game so typical of the matchup as to feel almost too cliche. Yet it was just that: Opening day, the first game of the season. The Red Sox will have many opportunities to redeem themselves following their 6-5 loss to the New Yorkers, but at least for now, this one will sting a bit.
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We can start with the good.
The Good
There were, and to be fair, still are, questions about the Red Sox starting rotation. Those questions haven’t gone away after one game, but maybe they’ll be lessened just a tad by seeing what Nathan Eovaldi did against the Yankees in Yankee Stadium. It’s probably stretching a bit to say he was dominant, but if he wasn’t that he wasn’t too far off.
Eovaldi struck out seven to only one walk in five innings of work, eliciting 17 swings and misses in the process. He was undone by the home run, allowing two. The first was a no-doubter from Anthony Rizzo which followed an Aaron Judge dinky-dunk single into left. The second was crushed by Giancarlo Stanton, but not at an angle that ever leaves the ballpark. Except in this case, it did, shooting across the outfield grass and just over the wall like a determined pigeon. That was the first of two homers the Yankees hit that wouldn’t have been homers in any other major league stadium but Yankee Stadium.
The end result wasn’t one of dominance for the Red Sox ace, but the Yankees have a very good lineup and Yankees Stadium is very easy to hit homers in (see previous sentence), so five innings of three run ball isn’t anything to be ashamed of.
More The Good
With the Red Sox offense, perhaps that should’ve been enough. Rafael Devers absolutely obliterated a Gerrit Cole offering in the first inning, sending the ball high into the atmosphere and knocking out several satellites. If your cell service went out around 1:15 in the afternoon, that’s probably why. The Red Sox had little trouble with Cole in the first inning, taking on one more and leaving JD Martinez in scoring position as well. That was it against Cole though, as he was able to tack on three scoreless innings after the first.
Xander Bogaerts went 3-for-5 with a double and it could’ve easily been two doubles had the ball not bounced so quickly off the left field wall back to left fielder Joey Gallo. Overall the lineup looked pretty strong, which is going to be a requirement for this team to be successful.
The Bad
While two of the Yankees’ homers were Yankee Stadium Specials, the Red Sox were playing in the same ballpark. They could’ve hit the same cheap-o homers and didn’t, so credit the Yankees for taking advantage of their clown car of a ballpark. Still though, the Red Sox did enough while at bat to win, but the pitching just couldn’t hold it down.
Eovaldi pitched better than three runs in five innings, but that was the final line. Then, after two scoreless innings from Garrett “The Only Reliever Anyone Trusts” Whitlock, Cora sent him back out there where he, on a 1-2 pitch, gave up a homer to DJ LeMahieu on a high fastball that wasn’t quite high enough. In truth, LeMahieu’s homer wouldn’t have been out in any other major league park (where have I read those words before?) so it’s hard to beat on Whitlock too much for it. Regardless, the homer tied the game.
The narrative is already taking hold that the Red Sox bullpen sucks. It might, but it didn’t yesterday. The Yankees scored three runs in five innings off of Eovaldi, and he pitched well. Guess what the bullpen gave up? Three runs in six innings. And two of those runs were Rob Manfred Zombie Runner runs where the Yankees started the inning with a runner on second base.
Those runs hurt, but the Red Sox pen was fine. Sure, you’d like to lock it down more, to grab the win in nine innings, one that was there for the taking, but the Yankees are a good hitting team and Yankee Stadium is a bandbox. The Red Sox bullpen, for a day anyway, did fine.
The one thing that sticks in my craw is Christian Vazquez striking out on four pitches to leave the bases loaded in the fifth inning. At that point the Red Sox were up 4-3 with a real opportunity to add on more. With two outs a single likely scores two, but Vazquez, batting at the bottom of the lineup for a reason, K’d and Whitlock was victimized by LeMahieu.
Opening Day losses are always just a bit more difficult to stomach. After a full off-season, this is the day we all focus on and a loss, with nothing else to distract us on the ledger, feels that much more painful. But in reality, the first game is the best game to lose simply because there is the most time remaining to make up for it. The Red Sox won’t win them all. They can’t win them all. But darn it if it wouldn’t have been nice to have that one.
Boston can still win this series, of course. They have two left in New York before moving on to Detroit. But as a friend reminded me yesterday, hey, remember the first series last year? I hadn’t. The Red Sox started the season by losing three straight to the Orioles, a team we knew at the time was lousy, though maybe we didn’t quite grasp that they’d go on to win just 49 of their remaining 159 games following that series. After starting with three straight losses to an almost historically crumby team, the Red Sox went on to make the ALCS. So things can switch quickly.
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