Game 114: Yankees at Red Sox

The Red Sox welcome the New York Yankees into town as playoff hopes for Boston truly begin to evaporate. However, because of the nonsense that is the supersized Wild Card, the Sox are just 4.5 games back of a piece of October with nearly 50 games to play. While Chaim Bloom could have gone all-in or sold out , he and the Sox did nothing but swap around strengths and weaknesses. Which is, I guess, defensible, when you don’t need to be much better than .500 to reach the playoffs.

On the morning of July 1st the Red Sox were fresh off a 20-6 June (the Yankees went 22-6), and sat in second place in the AL East. The Yankees proceeded to go 15-20 in July and August (so far) but the Red Sox went 12-25 and dropped to last place in the division and behind even the Baltimore Orioles, who entered 2022 as a laughing stock. Joke is on us, apparently.

It’s a homecoming for Andrew Benintendi, acquired for a song during his resurgent season. Luckily, the secret Sox went from .320/.387/.398 with the Kansas City Royals to a paltry .175/.320/.275 slash in his 13 games for the Evil Empire.

The Yankees are sending a starter with a 5.09 ERA in 4 starts this season. Germán hasn’t gone more than five innings or thrown more than 90 pitches in 2022. He struck out 7 Mets but in his other three starts recorded K totals of 2, 1, and 3.

Nathan Eovaldi has gone six innings in each of his last three starts and had his best performance of the last month against the toughest team he faced, the Houston Astros. Maybe that’s a good sign?

J.D. Martinez has hit just .193/.242/.307 with 1 home run since the start of July. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t traded? Bloom couldn’t find any takers?

Don’t get too excited but with three games against a slumping Yankees team and three games against the Pittsburgh Pitates and then tree games against the Baltimore Orioles anything can happen. Or maybe nothing. Is this the expanded playoffs working?

At least we’ve still got this: