Red Sox bullpen the big divider

SOMEWHERE in these two results in which bullpens matter greatly, you can probably f ind why the Red Sox will win the AL East: Boston is a major league-best 15-3 in extra innings while the Yankees are 17-25 in one-run games.

The Red Sox beat the Orioles in extra innings both Monday and Tuesday, winning 1-0 in 11 innings Tuesday behind 4 ²/₃ no-hit innings from their pen.

In the 18 extra-inning games this year, Boston relievers have a 1.19 ERA. The Red Sox are 4-0 in extra innings the past two weeks.

Boston won a 19-inning game against Toronto on Sept. 5 with its pen delivering 13 innings of shutout ball, a 15-inning game against Tampa Bay on Friday with its pen allowing two runs in 9 ¹/₃ innings and a 10- i nning game against Baltimore on Monday night when the pen helped the Red Sox rally from deficits of 5-0 and 6-1 with nine innings of threerun ball (two earned). The win Tuesday came though Boston never got a hit with a runner in scoring position, plating the winner on a wild pitch.

Boston began Tuesday with the majors’ secondbest bullpen ERA for the season at 3.12 (the Yanks were fourth at 3.47) and in September at 2.43. And it might just be deeper now and for the postseason than any point this year with Addison Reed being acquired at the trade deadline, rookie Austin Maddox offering seven shutout appearances in September, Carson Smith returning from nearly two years missed to injury and David Price now seeing if he can provide a multiinning relief force.

The Red Sox also have had the AL’s most dominant reliever all year, closer Craig Kimbrel, who has struck out 121 of the 239 batters he has faced this year.