BOSTON -- One win away from a four-game sweep of the Yankees, the Red Sox had ace Chris Sale lined up to finish the job on Sunday Night Baseball.
But as has been the case so often with Sale this season, things didn’t go as expected.
Instead, they unraveled.
The combination of Sale’s three walks and two homers allowed conspired to hand him a frustrating 9-6 loss to the Yankees that pinned the Sox nine games back in the American League East on a night they had a chance to close the gap to seven. Boston is one game behind the Athletics for the second AL Wild Card spot.
“We had an unbelievable series up until today,” said Sale. “And even today, we gave them everything they could handle. Just, as I sit here in front of you today, it’s kind of the same as a few other starts. Without me, we have a pretty good chance to win this game.
“To come out here and just be flat-out terrible, that’s tough. We had a chance to sweep a four-game set against the team that’s in front of us and we don’t have a whole bunch of games left -- it’s time to go.”
The lefty got himself into trouble with mislocated pitches over the heart of the plate, as well as others that didn’t come close enough to the plate.
All three batters Sale walked wound up scoring.
“I could take pitching bad and still winning a game or giving my team a chance to win, but I really kind of sucked the life out of us today,” Sale said. “And I was kind of the deciding factor.”
The frustrating part is that Sale seemed to get himself back to where he wanted in his previous two starts -- both of which he won while allowing a total of two runs over 12 innings while striking out 22.
One of the toughest parts of Sale’s sub-par season to date (5-10, 4.26 ERA) is that there seems to be a different issue each time he struggles.
This time, it was the disappearance of his command whenever he pitched from the stretch.
“It just seemed like my stuff flattened out when I got out of the stretch,” said Sale. “That’s when they did all their damage. Just something to look at there and figure out what I’m doing differently there as opposed to being out of the windup.”
To struggle against the Yankees is something new for Sale. In 14 starts against the Yankees prior to this season, Sale had a 1.66 ERA. But this season, the Bronx Bombers have given him fits, as evidenced by Sale’s 0-3 record and 7.71 ERA against them.
The one redeeming thing about that for Sale is that his next start will also be against the Yankees on Saturday in New York as part of a day-night doubleheader.
“That’s really good for me,” said Sale. “I really enjoy back-to-back starts, especially when the first one doesn’t go well. You always want your chance for redemption, or to try to pay them back. I enjoy the competition. Obviously it didn't go well, but I have a chance to get ‘em next week. I’m excited about that.”
This one wasn’t all on Sale. Boston was also sloppy in the field, making three errors and uncorking an untimely wild pitch that led to a run.
What happened on that JBJ misplay?
Despite Sale’s struggles, Boston’s relentless offense was hanging tough and threatening to make a game of it. But the wind was taken out of their sails a little on a rare misplay by elite defender Jackie Bradley Jr..
Down 6-3 in the seventh, Bradley raced in to make a nice basket catch for the second out of the inning. Sensing he could double Luke Voit off first – particularly after teammate Xander Bogaerts pointed for him to throw there -- Bradley fired to first. He realized too late that nobody was covering first. The ball went out of play for a devastating error that allowed two runs to score.
“It’s a freak play,” said manager Alex Cora, mentioning how all his defenders were lined up in the right spot in the event Bradley threw to the plate. Cora added that Voit created the chaos by making a baserunning error.
But Bradley acknowledges he should have made sure the play was there before he forced the issue.
“I made the play,” Bradley said. “I looked home, checked the runner at third first. He’s the main priority. Saw Edwin [Encarnacion] getting back to second. Started getting told to throw it to first. Nobody was there. It’s a play I shouldn’t have thrown. It was a play that I shouldn’t have tried to make. I could have just thrown it in where I was going to throw it initially and been done with the play.”
Now what?
It was still a good week for the Red Sox to go 5-2 against the two teams they were chasing in the Rays and Yankees. Those are the same two teams they play this week, starting with three against the Rays at Fenway from Tuesday to Thursday and then four at Yankee Stadium over the weekend.
In between comes Wednesday’s Trade Deadline. Of course Cora will stay in touch with president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski.
“We’ll talk,,” Cora said. “I don’t know how much, but we’ll talk. Everybody knows what’s going on so. We’ve been talking all the time. The communication between Dave and myself is on a daily basis and we know where we’re at with the club and we know what we have to do to make it better.”
Bullpen help figures to Dombrowski’s priority.