Are you nervous? Do you feel like you have to throw up? Do you feel the same level of urgency tonight as when the Red Sox faced the Yankees at Fenway Park in the single-game Wild Card playoff four years ago?
Well, if not, you probably should. In the three years the Red Sox have been absent from the playoffs, the current best-of-three Wild Card format has been played twelve times (4x per year), and so far, the winner of Game 1 has gone on to win every single one of them. Yes, that’s 100% of the time! In fact, the early tide in these things has been so strong that ten of those twelve series have turned into 2-0 sweeps.
So, as Bryan Joiner pointed out earlier today, this is why you go out and get Garrett Crochet. For this game! To get the jump on the opponent in a short series. And of course, this is especially true when that opponent is the Yankees with their super short porch in right field and you need a dominant left handed starter to protect against it. It goes without saying that this is BY FAR the biggest start of Crochet’s career to this point. Hopefully that has to keep getting updated multiple times over the next few weeks.
Offensively, the Red Sox are going with their platoon patrol lineup by loading it up with the righties against Max Fried, who will be coming at them from the left side. As posted earlier today, here’s how the splits look by OPS, and the difference in player production from each side of the plate:
Okay, here we go! Get excited, get nervous, and Go Sox!
⚾️ First Pitch: 6:08 pm at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx
