Unbeatable Sox pounding away
That memo, the one that read something about the Yankees being the stiff competition the Red Sox needed to bring them down to earth after feasting on the Marlins and Rays for their first nine games?
Pure spam.
After last night’s deliriously one-sided and dominating 14-1 series-opening romp, the Red Sox made the Yan- kees look like any other roadkill foolish enough to cross their path in this young but increasingly promising season.
If the third-inning sight of Giancarlo Stanton striking out on a Chris Sale pitch that was eye-high didn’t set the tone well enough, then the old-school David Mugar-sponsored fireworks show in the sixth, when the Sox exploded for nine runs capped off by a grand slam off the bat of Mookie Betts, did the trick.
The 9-1 Red Sox are playing both a literal and figurative brand of unbeatable baseball.
They still have not committed an error on the season, their bats — even J.D. Martinez got in on the run-producing act with a Wall-scratching two-run double in the big sixth — are wide awake and their rotation is rolling.
Manager Alex Cora is consciously playing down the .900 winning percentage.
“I don’t know, it’s still early in the season. It’s only a good start,” said Cora. “We know that there’s a lot of work to be done, there are a few aspects in the game we need to keep improving. They’re willing to do it, they’re studying the game, they keep talking the game, which is awesome. We’re not getting caught up in the whole start, it’s just a good start, that’s it.”
The Red Sox haven’t changed their winning ways or how they’re playing. They are playing while smiling, they are playing with swagger, they are playing cleanly and they are looking down — way down — at a Yankees team that they just sent under .500 to a 5-6 record.
Sure, the teams will meet 18 more times this season, but last night delivered the type of rude, one-sided introduction that suits the nature of this rivalry.
It’s fair warning that the brand of baseball the Red Sox are brandishing right now is lethal against any foe. And while granting the likelihood that they will lose a game at some point this season, perhaps this month, the greeting they gave to the Yankees, the presumptive AL East winner by most preseason accounts, was a glorious yawp from an immensely appealing team that has forgotten what defeat tastes like. It’s been, what, 13 days since the Sox lost their season opener to the Rays?
Feels longer than that, as the Yankees learned, slowly at first before the Red Sox went all fast and furious on them.
Sale, in shortsleeves, his scruffy-bearded Sphinx-like, his demeanor never changing, came out sharper than his last start in Miami. His first strikeout came against Stanton but his third, in the third, was a clinic in how to exploit a struggling slugger. Stanton has little idea where his strike zone is these days, and after noting that he swung and missed at a shoulder-high fastball for strike two, Sale climbed the formidably ladder and smoked another one even higher upstairs that Stanton could not resist. The next slugger, Gary Sanchez, could not resist or connect against Sale’s slider.
When Sale located a pitch not outside enough against Aaron Judge, that slugger extended his arms and sent a solo home run into the center field bleachers in the fifth inning. At that point, it narrowed the score to 5-1, and nobody felt as if this was the beginning of the Red Sox’ decline. It marked nothing.
Sale had another quick inning in the sixth, and he was at 87 pitches before the Red Sox offense did him a favor.
“He was able to work ahead, use the fastball upstairs and then the next guy with the slider, did a good job,” Cora said. “He was going to go out the next inning but the game, you know, opened up. It made no sense for us for us to send him out there. Out of his three starts, that was his best one.” Of course it was.
Sale is getting better, Betts is red-hot and the Sox have won nine out of their first 10 games.
It doesn’t matter who they’re playing. Until proven otherwise, they’re unbeatable.
Middles and endings count, too. But the Red Sox’ start this season, it counts for everything.