BOSTON -- During an hour-long press conference on Monday that served as the post-mortem of a 2026 season that fell short at the most important time of year, the one thing Red Sox manager Chad Tracy wanted to make clear is that there was no scripting of the games that led to his quick hooks of Payton Tolle in Game 1 and Sonny Gray in Game 2 of the American League Wild Card Series against the Yankees.
“The decisions are mine,” Tracy said. “Not one time since I've been here has anybody scripted a game or has anybody told me to use this number right here to decide in this inning. Those decisions, they're mine. So, as far as that specific one [in Game 2 with Gray], that didn't, obviously, go great. That falls on me. Do we have data analytics? Of course we do. Everybody does. Is somebody standing there pushing me, saying you need to do this, this, and this? Absolutely not.”
In Game 1, with the Sox trailing, 1-0, with two outs and none on in the bottom of the fifth, Tracy pulled Tolle with the dangerous Ben Rice looming. Tracy summoned lefty Erik Miller, who promptly gave up a homer to Rice.
A day later, the Red Sox were in an eerily similar spot. This time it was two on and two outs in the fifth with Cody Bellinger at the plate. Gray, as he noted after the game, led the AL by holding opponents to a .180 average the third time through the order. Again, the choice was Miller, who this time gave up an RBI single to Bellinger.
Adding to more of the second-guessing is that Miller, an Aug. 3 Trade Deadline acquisition from the Giants, gave up at least one run in four of his final five appearances of the regular season. The lone clean outing was his final one against the Guardians on Sept. 24.
“Well, his last outing at Fenway was exceptional,” Tracy said. “He obviously fought it for much of September. I see both sides, and I don't need to get too deep into defending this or that because I certainly could have gone the other way with that. And that could have gone well, and we wouldn't even be having the conversation.”
In particular, the removal of Gray, Boston’s most consistent starting pitcher all season, came under fire. And Gray added fuel to it by expressing his disappointment.
“I would have liked to live or die with me in that moment, but that's the competitor I am. And yeah, I think you can probably ask the guys, and they felt the same way,” Gray said. “So I felt strong, I felt confident, I felt convicted.”
Tracy said he did have a chance to speak with Gray in the days since the two-game sweep at the hands of the Yankees.
“The relationship there is good. Do I think he was wanting to stay out there? Quite obviously,” Tracy said. “But five months of relationship-building with players, and I think there's some things, they get painted sometimes [from the outside], that [the decision] stained it or ruined it. It's like, no, I have a very good working relationship with him. [The relationship] is in a fine place while also understanding his feelings on it.”
Gray’s most concise comment after the game was this: "I would've liked to have been trusted in that moment."
Tracy countered that on Monday.
“But I do trust Sonny Gray,” Tracy said. “I do trust the guys in the bullpen as well. So again, I think the easiest way to say is it was my call. It's my decision. It went south. I think the biggest thing for me coming into this was maybe dispelling any notion of people thinking that decisions get made prior to the game or with a piece of paper or with any computer. If I can do anything just to dispel that, say, those decisions are always going to fall on me.”
Another outspoken player after the season-elimination loss was first baseman Willson Contreras, who motioned his hands as if he was zipping his lips when asked about Gray’s removal, but also expressed dismay that the team was putting too much weight on analytics.
While Gray is a free agent, Contreras is signed for next season and the club holds an option on him for ‘28.
It was important for the Red Sox to clear the air with one of their most important hitters before he headed home for the offseason.
“Yeah, I saw Willson's comments. My interpretation is a little bit different than [the perception] there are clearly things that he wants fixed and changed,” chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said. “We actually had a great conversation, Trace and I, with Willson, yesterday. We met for over two hours, and we talked about a host of things. But it was incredibly constructive and covered a wide scope of things.”