The Red Sox have promise, but will need more than hope to get back into World Series contention.
COMMENTARY
The next-to-last Baseball Sunday of 2024 was quite the Baseball Sunday.
In Los Angeles, Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts cracked back-to-back homers to walk off the Rockies. The Dodgers are in that place they always seem to be — on the cusp of another National League West title, with a pitching staff that doesn’t seem healthy enough to win the thing that really matters.
The Tigers won again, piecing together six pitchers to pull even with the Royals for the second American League wild card. (Detroit is 29-14 since the morning of Aug. 5, 11 games better than the Red Sox in that span despite scoring exactly one more run than Boston has.) The Mariners couldn’t keep pace, squandering a five-run lead to Texas.
The Padres dealt the White Sox loss No. 120, tying the 1962 Mets for worst in your and your grandparents’ lifetime. The Yankees won in Oakland, pulling within a win of reclaiming the AL East.
Paul Skenes nosed his ERA back under 2.00 for the Pirates in Cincinnati, backed in part by the first MLB home run for traded-for-Quinn-Priester Nick Yorke. (He debuted for the Pirates a week ago Monday.)
Also of note: That loss was the end for the Reds’ David Bell, who was fired on Sunday night all of 14 months after the franchise gave him a three-year contract extension. That extension came amid the hope of a dynamic lineup of young players chasing a postseason berth.
That surge for October fizzled. There never was one this year; injuries and the vagaries of young players building into major leaguers saw to that. (As did some of the consistently worst defense in the game.) Some franchises stay committed to the process. Some fire their Chaim Bloom. Some fire their manager.
You know, not that there’s any analogs to Boston there. I’m sure the hope here is different.
Here, of course, there were major playoff implications on Sunday. For the Twins, anyway, with the Red Sox at least getting to play spoiler. A doubleheader sweep, 8-1 and 9-3, pinwheeled Minnesota out of the wild-card positions for the first time since their sausage days of early May.
Triston Casas, who had three home runs in his first 32 games since returning for good from his rib injury, hit three in Game 1. (“Not even in a video game,” Casas told reporters when asked if he’d ever done that before.) Romy Gonzalez, a pinch hitter extraordinaire this season who was in a 1 for 11 skid when the day began, cracked a three-run homer in Game 2 to spark a nine-run rally.
On the first day of fall, the aged ballyard rocked to Mr. Brightside just like it did most of the summer. Those there were happy to be. The home team won an important game.
Even if it was an important one for someone else. Even if they’ll lose more than they win there for the second straight year, the first time that’s happened in back-to-back full seasons since 1965-66.
“We’re gonna keep playing,” manager Alex Cora told reporters on Sunday night. “We’re gonna keep playing all the way to the end.”
A point of emphasis, given last September forced Cora into some deep personal reflection that offered a clear benefit both to himself and his team.
One more win will be No. 79, a step beyond the last two dispiriting years. (The Blue Jays, 6-12 this month, look to have signed a least on last place for 2024.) Three more wins will mean a .500 season, and potentially a third-place finish back ahead of the Rays.
Window dressing, really. Before Casas made the reminder of what might have been in Red Sox lineup louder, Rafael Devers told MassLive that “I never felt like myself this year.”
Devers won’t need surgery on his shoulders this winter, rest appearing to be enough to get one of Boston’s offensive keys right again. It would be a start, but only that.
“There’s a brand [of play] that we’re looking for. We’ll make sure that we play that way,” Cora told The Athletic in March. “I think these guys are talented. They are. Now we have to go out there and prove it, and I believe they will.”
There is something here with this team. They proved that. Tanner Houck was an All-Star and powered through the 170-inning barrier. Kutter Crawford is just shy of 180 and made 32 starts. Jarren Duran. Wilyer Abreu, and on down the line.
They also proved they need something more to step from beyond the morass of teams just like them — some good breaks from contention, some bad breaks from failure. That will get them back into the realm of those readying themselves for baseball beyond the upcoming final Sunday.
The season is ending here. Hope’s better than some of the alternatives shown across the game at the end of another year.
But it’s no promise of anything, and it’s high time the hope here be built upon.
