Picture it: The fight goes down to the last day of the season: Sunday, Oct. 1. The Red Sox will be hosting the Houston Astros at Fenway Park, with the Yankees facing the Toronto Blue Jays in the Bronx.
Picture the two teams deadlocked atop the standings. The team that emerges in first place earns the security blanket of a best-of-five Division Series in the postseason; the loser gets hurtled into the abyss of the dreaded one-and-done wild card game, or possibly misses the tournament, depending on what’s going on with the Kansas City Royals, Seattle Mariners, etc.
For added drama, maybe the Red Sox would have Astro’s Dad, aka David Price, facing the Astros.
Maybe, shades of ’78, the Yankees stage a “Boston Massacre” reboot and the two teams end the regular season tied for first, forcing a one-game playoff. The networks would break out the old Fisk vs. Munson, Pedro vs. Zimmer, ’Tek vs. A-Rod videos. The beat guys would chase down Yaz and the Goose for comments. Larry Lucchino would gather everyone around the camp fire and tell the old Evil Empire stories. Reggie Jackson, now 71 years old, would be the straw that stirs the Geritol.
Yeah, it’d be great for baseball, but it would be very, very bad for the Red Sox.
Not to be nasty about this, but the Red Sox have it in their power the next couple of weeks to apply a spiked foot to the collective throats of the Yankees — all but eliminating their century-old rivals as contenders for AL East supremacy. Beginning with tonight’s series opener at Yankee Stadium, the Red Sox play 10 of their next 23 games against the Bombers, and the timing couldn’t be better. The Sox have won eight straight. The Yankees have been a little stiff and achy of late, having lost six of 10 going into last night’s series finale against the Blue Jays.
This has been a season of turnarounds. First it was the Yanks who were stretching their muscles, and then it was the Red Sox. And then the boo-hoo Sox lost their way after fake tough guy David Price verbally assaulted NESN analyst Dennis Eckersley on that charter flight, all this happening as the Yankees went on a run and re-took first place.
Now it’s the Red Sox who are sizzling, winning games on dramatic walk off home runs. Jackie Bradley Jr. made a couple of web gems. Christian Vazquez picked a runner off second. Sandy Leon won a game with the best slide anyone has ever seen by a wide body.
Tonight’s game begins a three-game weekend series between the Sox and Yankees, with the hosts sending lefty Eduardo Rodriguez to the mound against Bombers southpaw Jaime Garcia, followed by a 4:05 p.m. start tomorrow and the obligatory 8:05 p.m. start on Sunday.
After that, it’s three more games next weekend at Fenway Park.
And then it’s back to the Bronx for a four-game series that begins on Aug. 31.
Ten games against the Yankees between tonight and Sept. 3. Again, that’s 10 of the next 23 games for the Red Sox.
There’s also a makeup game against the Indians in there (Monday night), plus a rematch of the ’46, ’67, ’04 and ’13 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals next Tuesday and Wednesday, also at Fenway.
These days you can’t blame Yankee GM Brian Cashman for feeling a little bit like the fabled Little Dutch Boy, who tried to save Holland by sticking his finger in the dike to stop a leak, only to have it spring anew whenever he removed it.
Cashman has tried his darndest to patch all the Yankees’ leaks this season, starting with the bullpen and third base with his trade with the White Sox for David Robertson, Tommy Kahnle and Todd Frazier, then first base with his deal for buried Brewers prospect Garrett Cooper, and finally to the starting rotation with last week’s deal for much-coveted A’s righty Sonny Gray. But, alas, every time it seems Cashman has shored up a significant Yankee vulnerability, a new one immediately crops up.
As a result, when it comes to predicting just how far the Yankees can go in the postseason — or if, gulp, they will even make the postseason — we appear to be right back where we were at the start of the season, when the Yankee high command itself said cautiously they hoped this would be the year in which the much-touted youth movement began to take hold at the major league level while grudgingly admitting the starting pitching was rife with question marks
There’s a big four-game trip to Cleveland to play Tito Francona’s Indians. There’s a three-game Fenway series against the Orioles. There’s a three-game trip to Toronto.
Nobody’s suggesting these games are unimportant. With the season down to the last six weeks, every outcome is magnified. But those games against the Yankees serve a double purpose: Every win is a Yankees loss, and every Yankees loss pushes the Bombers deeper into the wild card abyss, or worse.
It’s the perfect baseball storm for the Red Sox: They’re hot, the Yankees are cool.
That’s the good news for Red Sox fans. The bad news? The Yankees have won six of nine meetings between the two teams this season, outscoring the Sox 38-16.
Results of Game One
Chapman nearly combusted again in what would’ve been the most devastating loss of the Yankees’ season after they scored five runs in the eighth inning to take the lead, but a massive double play thanks to Aaron Hicks nabbing Eduardo Nunez at third base on a sac fly helped Chapman avert disaster and earn his 15th save in the Yanks’ critical 5-4 win.
The $86 million closer hadn’t pitched since last Saturday and was making just his second appearance of the month. Joe Girardi chalked Chapman’s poor location up to rustiness — 12 of his first 15 pitches were balls.
“It’s the things that you go through as a pitching coach and a manager when you don’t use your closer for a while,” Girardi said. “OK, it’s a big weekend, you want to save him for the weekend. You don’t want to just use him in a game in case you need him three days in a row.”
Chapman didn’t feel going five days between appearances should have mattered.
“You can’t really use that as an excuse,” Chapman said through an interpreter. “To me, it’s just a bad day where you’re not as sharp as you want to (be.)”
The Yankees were riding high and their fans were abuzz after taking the lead following just two hits by the offense through seven innings. Chapman then walked Jackie Bradley Jr. on four pitches, Nunez on five pitches and Mookie Betts on six pitches. His slider was nowhere close to the strike zone.
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