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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 2:07:43 GMT -5
Yankees @ Red Sox Friday, 24th September 2021 7pm @ Fenway Park
Cole 15-8/3.03
15-8 with a 3.03 ERA in 28 starts of 2021. 4-3 with a 3.74 ERA in 9 career appearances, all starts, vs BOS.
Eovaldi 10-8/3.58
10-8 with a 3.58 ERA in 30 starts of 2021. 3-3 with a 2.87 ERA in 14 career appearances (11 starts) vs NYY.
Red Sox Nation Stats @rsnstats · 4h #RedSox game time Friday is 7:10 ET/4:10 PT. Expected conditions at Fenway Park in Boston: Thunderstorms, 72°F / 22°C, Winds: S 13 MPH. #MLB #Yankees #MLB
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 2:09:28 GMT -5
Pete Abraham @peteabe · 11h Pitching matchups for #Yankees - #RedSox: Friday: Cole (15-8, 3.03) vs. Eovaldi (10-8, 3.58), 7:10 p.m., NESN, ESPN Saturday: Cortes (2-2, 2.79) vs. Pivetta (9-7, 4.63), 4:10 p.m., NESN, YES, MLB Network. Sunday: Montgomery (6-6, 3.55) vs. Rodriguez (11-8, 4.97), 7:08 p.m., ESPN
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 3:10:43 GMT -5
Wild Card Standings
Boston 88-65 +2 NYY 86-67 - Jays 85-67 0.5 Sea 93-69 2.5 Oak 82-70 3.5
Red Sox, NYY, are off and start a series tomorrow. Mariners and A's play this afternoon...Kikuchi vs Bassit Blue Jays start a series in Minny tonight......Matz vs Pineda
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 3:26:07 GMT -5
Red Sox Notes @soxnotes · 5h The Sox are 88-65 (.575) and own the AL’s longest active win streak (7 games). They are 23 games above .500, matching their season high. Since 8/20, the Sox are 7-2-1 in series and 19-11 (.633) in games. They are 15-5 in their last 20 home games (30-12 in their last 42).
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 9:30:51 GMT -5
Lou Merloni @loumerloni · 1h Stop listening to those with agenda’s. It’s OK to enjoy this team.
Criticism should never be dismissed. I criticize this team. But telling people that the game is boring, dead and that they should “boycott” this team and not watch or listen? Kind of different.
I don’t care what color their uniforms are, just win. Some don’t like them, is it because YOU don’t like them or is because you’re being told you shouldn’t like them? “It’s a $$ grab”…Yeah, players deciding they like them is a $$ grab for JH. Idiots. Think for yourselves
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 9:32:06 GMT -5
Red Sox Notes @soxnotes · 23m The Red Sox are 11-1 in their last 12 games started by Chris Sale or Nathan Eovaldi.
Sale has a 2.57 ERA in 7 starts.
Eovaldi has a 2.43 ERA in his last 7 starts.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 9:37:12 GMT -5
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 11:16:47 GMT -5
The offense shall lead them
The pitching has never been the source of this team’s strength, and the bats are alive once again. By bryanjoiner@bryanjoiner Sep 23, 2021, 10:30am EDT
At first I was going to write that this was a Red Sox season defined by peaks and valleys, but then I remembered it was sort of one long plateau at high altitude all the way until August, at which point the team hit the edge of a metaphorical Grand Canyon and began to tumble in. The good news? After six weeks of scraping to get back out, they seem to find themselves, if not quite at the top, close enough for comfort. The Blue Jays, so near the top just a week ago, are now beneath them, with the Yankees having climbed over Toronto on Wednesday.
Now, the Yankees are set to come to Boston tomorrow and maybe have their season effectively ended after August’s 14-game winning streak and concomitant, albeit brief, resuscitation of Yankees fan shit talk, with which I was bombarded for a few days, the ultimate shock and awe of which is just how short it was. No matter what happens with the Sox for the rest of the year, finishing ahead of a playoff-missing Yankees team is both an incredible possible accomplishment, given their respective rosters and expectations, and moral one, given that the Yankees are Bad.
Of course, making the one-game playoff could last exactly nine innings and the we’d still be sad. Despite my column last week saying I’d start Chris Sale over Nathan Eovaldi in that game all things being equal, it’s clear that all things are not equal, with Sale a little wobbly on the mound in his second to last time out following his second COVID bout, though fine last night. Meanwhile, Eovaldi is shoving, and with Sale lined up to potentially start the last game of the regular season, I’d just slot in Nate and have Sale ready to piggyback him if they have the luxury of keeping Sale out of said final start. (Beating the Yankees this weekend would be a good way to lock that down.)
What has become especially clear to me in the last week or so is that, if the Sox are going to win anything at all this year, the bats will lead them there. Fortunately, these bats seem to be coming alive again at just the right time, the post-All Star break lull being acceptable in retrospect after the lofty highs of the first half. The pitching was never the strength of this team and remains, even after Sale’s return and especially after Garrett Whitlock’s injury, a decidedly patchwork affair. The Sox really do have the talent to make a run for the title, but almost all of that talent is in at the plate. Their hitting will take them wherever they’re going.
This is pretty scary for a team staring down a potential one-game playoff with Toronto, and (I can’t believe I’m writing this, so please bear with me) potential AL Cy Young Award winner Robbie Ray, but it’s possible and likely that just as the Sox won’t really get the chance to set things up exactly as they want before a playoff game, neither would the Jays. Ironically, a Sox sweep of the Yankees this weekend would make it far more likely that the Jays would be able to hold Ray back for the game, but you only play the team in front of you and you play to win the game.
The bottom line is it’s nice to finally feel good about this season again now that a playoff berth is likely, the minor leagues have become good-to-great, and the future looks bright. But the present is still pretty good, and any progress into and through the playoffs would truly be a gift.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 11:20:59 GMT -5
Red Sox Notes @soxnotes · 1h Eovaldi vs. Cole Friday night at Fenway.
Qualified AL pitcher rankings:
WAR Eovaldi – 1st (5.6) Cole – 2nd (5.2)
FIP Eovaldi – 1st (2.72) Cole – 2nd (2.76)
HR/9.0 IP Eovaldi – 1st (0.73) Cole – 6th (1.12)
BB/9.0 IP Eovaldi – 1st (1.66) Cole – 4th (2.02)
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 11:22:53 GMT -5
Ian Browne @ianmbrowne · 12m Down the stretch they come! This week's Red Sox beat newsletter gets you hyped for Red Sox-Yankees Armageddon weekend at Fenway. We also chat with the red-hot Bobby Dalbec, stump you on some good Red Sox-Yankees trivia. And more.view.mail.mlblists.com/messages/16324068933278cf58c0d7a2e/raw
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 11:24:27 GMT -5
Stakes are high with The Rivalry resuming 12:00 PM ADT Mike Lupica
Mike Lupica @mikelupica
It has been a long time since the Red Sox and Yankees played a September series like this in which both teams had so much skin in the game. Maybe too long.
The Red Sox, who continue to be one of the great surprises in baseball this season, come into the three-gamer at Fenway Park as the leader in the American League Wild Card race, two games ahead of the Yankees. The Yankees? They just scratched their way past the Blue Jays to get into the second AL Wild Card spot by sweeping Texas. It is unlikely that both the Red Sox and Yankees will miss the postseason. But they both still could. And it is likely that one of them might.
So there will be the feeling and sharp edge of knockout September baseball for the first time in a while, when Gerrit Cole goes against Nathan Eovaldi. The Yankee ace against the guy who was the Red Sox’s ace until Chris Sale came back. By the end of this one, the Red Sox will be three up in the AL Wild Card with a week to play. Or the Yankees will be back to within a game.
The games between these two teams always seem to matter, of course. No one will ever forget when what is known as The Rivalry was as good and heated and memorable as it has ever been, and likely will be. There were 38 regular-season games played between the Red Sox and the Yankees in those seasons (2003 and ‘04; Boston won 20 and New York 18), and those were just the appetizers.
Because then they twice played each other in the most dramatic events between them since Bucky Dent’s home run won a one-game playoff between them in Fenway Park on Oct. 2, 1978, the year that the Yankees came from 14 1/2 games back to finally catch the Sox the last week of the regular season.
Then came 2003 and a Game 7 won by the Yankees in the bottom of the 11th of Game 7 of the ALCS at the old Yankee Stadium, where the current Yankees manager, Aaron Boone, hit a walk-off homer out to left off Tim Wakefield. The very next year, the Red Sox didn’t just come back. They wrote the greatest comeback in baseball history and maybe sport history, coming from three games to none behind, and finally winning Games 6 and Game 7 at the old Stadium, on their way to winning their first World Series since 1918, when they still had this guy Babe Ruth.
In memory, it seemed like all of the nine-inning games in those years tried to make it past four hours. There was an incident that ended with Pedro Martinez putting Yankees coach Don Zimmer on the ground. There was another one at Fenway, where Jason Varitek stuck his catcher’s mitt in Alex Rodriguez’s face to another fracas between the two teams. And that’s just the short list.
“I came to hate those games,” Joe Torre joked to me one time.
It was like that in 2003 and ’04. But nobody talks much about the race in the AL East between the two teams that happened in 2005, when they ended up tied at 95-67 after a three-game series at Fenway, and the Yankees won the division because they had won the season series from the Sox.
That season is worth remembering now because it also produced a September weekend series between them -- at the Stadium that time -- that feels like the one we’ll get this weekend at Fenway. That time, the Yankees were still trying to catch the Red Sox in mid-September, and the Indians had gotten hot enough to look as if they might knock out either the Sox or the Yanks from the AL Wild Card.
The Red Sox and Yankees had split the first two games of the series. The rubber game on Sunday was between Randy Johnson and Wakefield. It came the day after Johnson’s 42nd birthday, and even though his Yankees career was not what anyone expected it to be -- the following season he won 17 games with an ERA of 5.00 -- he produced not just his best performance as a Yankee, but one of the most intense 1-0 games any Red Sox-Yankees series had seen.
Johnson struck out eight that day against two walks in seven innings. The only run came on a Jason Giambi home run in the first. Wakefield only gave up three hits in defeat. The Yankees would go on to pass the Red Sox and take the division. The Red Sox got the one AL Wild Card spot in play in those days. In the end, Cleveland came up a couple of games short.
“That’s the pitcher that everybody expected, and that’s the pitcher that I expected,” Johnson said when it was over that day.
Cole against Eovaldi this time around. But a series, 16 years later, that feels a lot like the one in 2005. Three years ago, the Red Sox and Yankees played a hard, four-game division series that wasn’t settled until the bottom of the ninth of Game 4. This one, this weekend, feels a little like that. Sometimes this is The Rivalry in name only. Not this weekend at Fenway. A lot of skin in the game. For both of them. Like the old days.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 13:34:48 GMT -5
Pete Abraham @peteabe · 31m Wouldn't want to see them all the time, but the City Connect yellow Sox uniforms are 100 times better than the alternate blue softball jerseys. And the baby blue helmets and caps are 🔥.
Papa Abraham this morning: "They're winning, leave well enough alone."
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 23, 2021 16:04:26 GMT -5
Red Sox Designate Geoff Hartlieb, Yacksel Rios For Assignment
By Anthony Franco | September 23, 2021 at 3:15pm CDT
The Red Sox announced they’ve designated relievers Geoff Hartlieb and Yacksel Rios for assignment. The moves create space on the 40-man roster for Jarren Duran and Jonathan Araúz, both of whom have reinstated from the COVID-19 injured list and optioned to Triple-A Worcester.
Boston claimed Hartlieb off waivers from the Mets a few weeks ago, right as the bullpen was being hit hard by the virus spread throughout the clubhouse. Added for depth, he was immediately optioned to Worcester and didn’t wind up making an appearance with the Red Sox before losing his spot on the 40-man roster.
Hartlieb will find himself on waivers for the third time this season. The 27-year-old began the year with the Pirates, with whom he’d spent the first five years of his pro career. Pittsburgh waived Hartlieb in July, where the Mets claimed him. He’s worked nine innings of eleven-run ball between the two clubs, striking out nine but issuing eleven walks and hitting three batters. In 66 1/3 innings over parts of three MLB seasons, the right-hander owns a 7.46 ERA with a below-average 20.5% strikeout rate and an elevated 14.9% walk percentage.
In spite of those big league struggles, Hartlieb hasn’t yet made it through waivers unclaimed. He’s induced ground-balls on exactly half the balls in play in the majors, a quality rate. He also owns a far more impressive 3.06 ERA in 64 1/3 Triple-A innings, fanning 27.8% of opponents with a more manageable 10.9% walk rate. Hartlieb throws a mid-90s sinker and has gotten decent swing-and-miss numbers on his slider, and he can still be optioned through the end of the 2022 season. It’s not out of the question he lands with another club on waivers.
Rios has been a part of three organizations this year as well. The right-hander signed a minor league deal with the Rays and got off a sterling start with their top affiliate in Durham. He couldn’t crack the loaded Tampa Bay bullpen, but the Mariners acquired him in early June and almost immediately selected him to the majors. His time in Seattle was short-lived, as he was designated for assignment less than a week later and traded to Boston.
Between the M’s and Red Sox, Rios has tossed 27 1/3 innings of 4.28 ERA ball. That’s come with similarly poor peripherals as Hartlieb’s, but Rios has missed plenty of bats in Triple-A. The 28-year-old has a 1.45 ERA in the minors with a 32.9% strikeout percentage. As with Hartlieb, it’s possible another team takes a flier based on that Triple-A dominance, although Rios is in his final option year. Any team that claims him would need to keep him on the active roster next season or expose him to waivers themselves. Rios has previously been outrighted in his career, so he’d have the right to elect free agency if he passes through unclaimed.
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Post by scrappyunderdog on Sept 23, 2021 19:33:39 GMT -5
The offense shall lead them
The pitching has never been the source of this team’s strength, and the bats are alive once again.By bryanjoiner@bryanjoiner Sep 23, 2021, 10:30am EDT The Sox really do have the talent to make a run for the title, but almost all of that talent is in at the plate. Their hitting will take them wherever they’re going. Joyner is badly underrating Sale & Eovaldi. Their ERA+ are 185 & 132 respectively.
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Post by CP_Jon_GoSox on Sept 24, 2021 2:40:56 GMT -5
Red Sox Designate Geoff Hartlieb, Yacksel Rios For Assignment
By Anthony Franco | September 23, 2021 at 3:15pm CDT
The Red Sox announced they’ve designated relievers Geoff Hartlieb and Yacksel Rios for assignment. The moves create space on the 40-man roster for Jarren Duran and Jonathan Araúz, both of whom have reinstated from the COVID-19 injured list and optioned to Triple-A Worcester.
Boston claimed Hartlieb off waivers from the Mets a few weeks ago, right as the bullpen was being hit hard by the virus spread throughout the clubhouse. Added for depth, he was immediately optioned to Worcester and didn’t wind up making an appearance with the Red Sox before losing his spot on the 40-man roster.
Hartlieb will find himself on waivers for the third time this season. The 27-year-old began the year with the Pirates, with whom he’d spent the first five years of his pro career. Pittsburgh waived Hartlieb in July, where the Mets claimed him. He’s worked nine innings of eleven-run ball between the two clubs, striking out nine but issuing eleven walks and hitting three batters. In 66 1/3 innings over parts of three MLB seasons, the right-hander owns a 7.46 ERA with a below-average 20.5% strikeout rate and an elevated 14.9% walk percentage.
In spite of those big league struggles, Hartlieb hasn’t yet made it through waivers unclaimed. He’s induced ground-balls on exactly half the balls in play in the majors, a quality rate. He also owns a far more impressive 3.06 ERA in 64 1/3 Triple-A innings, fanning 27.8% of opponents with a more manageable 10.9% walk rate. Hartlieb throws a mid-90s sinker and has gotten decent swing-and-miss numbers on his slider, and he can still be optioned through the end of the 2022 season. It’s not out of the question he lands with another club on waivers.
Rios has been a part of three organizations this year as well. The right-hander signed a minor league deal with the Rays and got off a sterling start with their top affiliate in Durham. He couldn’t crack the loaded Tampa Bay bullpen, but the Mariners acquired him in early June and almost immediately selected him to the majors. His time in Seattle was short-lived, as he was designated for assignment less than a week later and traded to Boston.
Between the M’s and Red Sox, Rios has tossed 27 1/3 innings of 4.28 ERA ball. That’s come with similarly poor peripherals as Hartlieb’s, but Rios has missed plenty of bats in Triple-A. The 28-year-old has a 1.45 ERA in the minors with a 32.9% strikeout percentage. As with Hartlieb, it’s possible another team takes a flier based on that Triple-A dominance, although Rios is in his final option year. Any team that claims him would need to keep him on the active roster next season or expose him to waivers themselves. Rios has previously been outrighted in his career, so he’d have the right to elect free agency if he passes through unclaimed.
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