They are simply playing better, and smarter, in these recent showdowns.Ĭonsider when Xander Bogaerts the shortstop played a key role in the sixth inning when Giancarlo Stanton was again thwarted. This is the new normal when the Red Sox play the Yankees in October. (Photo of Cora removing Eovaldi: Bob DeChiara / USA Today) I’m just kind of caught up in the moment and I don’t want to come out of the game.” “I’m never going to second-guess what he does. “He explained to me a lot of our guys in the pen matched up well against the Yankees,” Eovaldi said after the 6-2 Red Sox victory sent them to the American League Division Series. The right-hander allowed two singles through 5 1/3 innings, striking out eight of the first 18 batters he’d faced.īut when manager Alex Cora emerged from the dugout with one out in the sixth inning after Eovaldi allowed an Anthony Rizzo solo homer wrapped around Pesky’s Pole followed by an infield single, the pitcher probably shouldn’t have been shocked.Ĭora was turning to his bullpen despite just 71 pitches from his ace, but this wasn’t an unfamiliar move for the manager.Įovaldi greeted Cora with a staredown as he approached the mound and a notable silence fell over the immensely raucous crowd. Tabbed for the win-or-go-home wild-card start on Tuesday, Red Sox starter Nathan Eovaldi was convinced he’d be able to put the rough outing against the Yankees on Sept. (Photo of Gerrit Cole after giving up his second homer of the night: Charles Krupa / Associate Press) All could have done better simply for themselves all could have done better in a more constructive environment. The coaching staff gets squeezed into marginalized middle management. The front office and ownership publicly blamed the players midseason the players blame the front office. Who’s to blame for this latest disappointment? Failure falls on no one sect or individual - but where there are many fingers, there are many places to point to in apportioning the blame. The Yankees’ season ended in a predictable fashion: With a collection of shortcomings and mistakes that sends them into the long winter burdened with the weight of failure and humiliation. A 162-game season is long, and players taxed their bodies and the coaching staff exhausted their emotional reserves looking for solutions, and the front office gave up farm depth to acquire Anthony Rizzo, Joey Gallo, Clay Holmes and others in pursuit of keeping afloat what was plainly a leaky boat. The players and the club invested in this season’s potential, even as the results in the first few months of the regular season showed them to be a team that would need to win games in spite of themselves. In the end, the Yankees’ efforts to turn their flawed and inconsistent team into a championship contender resulted in them delaying the dawn of their offseason by two measly days.
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