Life, and things, tend to roll forward whether you are ready for them or not. Whether you want them to or not. As the Red Sox are ravaged by a COVID outbreak, they are forced to march out day after day with fewer players every day. A break, some reprieve, from COVID would be nice! It’s been a year and a half! And here we are!
Now we can’t even put poor Yairo Muñoz in the game!
First and foremost, I hope that nobody, anywhere, baseball or not, does not get sick!
This is a baseball blog after all, you don’t come here to read about normal life, which is why I choose to come here to not write about normal life. Normal life makes me anxious and recently upset and disgusted. So I write about baseball, which also makes me anxious and recently upset and disgusted.
So a quick recap from my absence.
It hasn’t been great out there!
The Sox continue to lose winnable games, and continue to just play the most absurd brand of baseball. Granted they are losing their best players to COVID, and the other good players seem to all be simultaneously turning into pumpkins.
Before the game yesterday the Sox were 1 game ahead of the A’s for the second wild-card spot. The A’s, Red Sox, Mariners, Yankees, and kind of the Jays are competing for the two wild card spots. The A’s and Red Sox seem to be trying their hardest to not play in the playoffs at all.
So the situation is tense, to say the least.
To the game! SALE DAY!!!
I love Sale Day! This was probably the least excited I have been for Sale Day in a long time! The Red Sox are free-falling and are without X and 8 other guys, and the Rays are winning seemingly every game they play. The Yankees won 1000 games in August it seems like, but gained no ground on the Rays! It’s amazing! I was not excited for this Sale Day.
Sale was good! He wasn’t great, but he was good enough to keep the good guys in the game long enough to give them a chance to win. His only real blemish came at the hands of Wander Franco.
As a brief digression….
Freaking Wander Franco man!
Not sure if I’m more excited to watch Wander for the next 6 years or the Rays to trade him for 17 pitchers that throw 98 and can each pitch an inning and 2/3 for the next 8 years. Either way, it’s not great! The Rays will most likely trade him, or they won’t and we get to suffer the consequences!
Look at this nonsense!
Fastball up and away, out of the zone, and he pops it over the porch in right. I do hate the Trop, but that’s out in a lot of places, unfortunately. Not a bad pitch from Sale! Just freakish from Wander.
Like you can’t even see how fast his legs are moving because of the quality of my GIF! I hate it! (Also he is kinda fun to watch, but I won’t admit such a thing)
Digression over - Lucky for the Red Sox, they have a guy named Garrett Whitlock. He was brilliant and really buckled down and got some big ground balls and strikeouts to hold the Rays and get some outs at the plate.
I have been hard on Vazquez lately. His play has seemed tired and laxidazical. Last night, he was great! He literally carried the team. Rbi single. Game tieing bomb. And an incredibly superb pick on the first out at home in the 7th. That was a great play! (He still made a high tag, that is literally going to kill me (High tags are bad because if you tag a guy in the stomach, he can get his foot on the plate before you touch his middle)).
As luck would have it, the Sox had a chance in the top of the 9th. Duran, who has looked absolutely out of sorts lately, changing his stance and grip and basically everything to try to find something that works, was up with Raffy on second. He somehow found a hole on the right side plating Raffy and then all that was left was for Otto to hold it down.
Hold it down he did!
Otto looked great!
For now, he is the closer. Or Whitlock is if he can pitch long enough. Whatever the case, the Red Sox won the game! This was a huge huge win. Cora was as pumped as I’ve seen him.
A’s lose. Yankees win. Mariners win. Jays win.
Yankees - +2.0
Red Sox - 0.0
————————
A’s - -2.0
Mariners - -3.5
Jays - -4.5
Weird baseball stuff
A new segment that will appear about as often as weird baseball stuff happens. Weird baseball rules catcher mask penalty. One thing I like about baseball is weird new stuff happens all the time, and especially when you play places like the Trop (also read: A horrible place) or Fenway. Last night one of the weird ones almost happened. It didn’t happen but almost did.
I saw this happen in real-time, and thought. Hey, something like this just happened!
Who knows what would have happened had this been called on Zunino last night! The likely outcome is even though it greatly increases the odds the Red Sox score, they probably would have found a way to lose! So in retrospect, I’m glad they won! And I wouldn’t change a thing! But it’s a weird baseball rule, and want you all to know it just like I learned about it. I’ve been around baseball since I was in the womb and played since I was 4, and never heard of this until Curt Casali.
There are other things called catcher’s balks, which are also super weird and fun. But we will leave that for another day!
Go Sox!
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