Losing 9-0 against your blood rivals to open off the postseason is bad enough. But the pain of last night was brought to another level by losing 9-0 while your leadoff hitter and the face of the franchise mysteriously leaves the game after two awkward strikeouts.
As we discussed last night, Roman Anthony appeared to re-aggravate his bad right hand in the final game of the season against the Rays. And as OTM’s Matt Gross points out, footage from last night shows that he had his hand heavily taped up prior to the game:
And, as it turns out, despite the fact that he returned at the end of August and performed as the lineup’s top hitter during an otherwise sleepy stretch run to end the season, Anthony has been battling the hand the whole time. In fact, Andruw Monasterio had been informed before the game even started that he may be called on to replace Anthony in the lineup. “He took a check swing and then another swing and his hand flared on him. And it got uncomfortable, so we had to make a move there,” Chad Tracy said. “It’s difficult. You’ll get a zinger every once in a while where you feel something, it’s fine, it goes away … [Tuesday] some stuff happened that was more serious and was uncomfortable.” (Alex Speier, Boston Globe)
Update, 4:20 PM: Anthony is not just out of the lineup tonight, he’s out for the series:
Update, 5:30 PM: And just to make things a little weirder, Anthony will be replaced in the lineup by none other than Curtis Mead, who has effectively not played at all for the Red Sox this year due to injury.
With Anthony out, Jahmai Jones will DH and leadoff, while Nate Eaton will play left.
Anthony was hardly the only hitter to struggle against Cam Schlittler last night. And making matters worse was the fact that the Sox had been preparing to face him for weeks. But Schlittler had a surprise in store for the Sox, as he unleashed his curveball far more than he typically does. “He was landing it just for some get-me-overs to try to get back into counts and getting ahead early. Good on him to kinda mix it up there,” said Caleb Durbin. “I thought he was doing a better job today of mixing up in the zone and lower in the zone with fastballs and his curveball.” (Chris Cotillo, MassLive)
It won’t matter how the lineup performs tonight if Sonny Gray can’t keep the Yankees off the board. Gray has an ugly history with the Yankees. The arguable nadir of his career occurred during his brief time in pinstripes and he has since said he never wanted to play for the Yankees in the first place. But he doesn’t necessarily regret his time in the Bronx. “I think there’s a lot of people and a lot of players that can have one bump in the road and not get back on the tracks,” he said, “and for me, there’s been bumps along the way and that may have been a little bit of a bigger bump than others. But then to be able to recenter, to refocus, to continue to have confidence in yourself and not get off the wagon, get back on the wagon and continue to move forward in your career and in your life as well … ultimately it made me a better person.” (Tara Sullivan, Boston Globe)
Ben Rice, unfortunately, did always want to play for the Yankees, despite the fact that he grew up in Cohasset and likely has an opinion on South Shore style bar pizza. But his New England roots aren’t the only unusual thing about him, as he’s also the rare Ivy League grad in the big leagues. (Ronald Blum, Boston.com)
Sonny’s hatred of the Yankees is, of course, welcome around these parts. But it’s possible that the Yankees are doing one thing in particular better than everyone else: constructing their roster for these short Wild Card round series. (Michael Baumann, FanGraphs)
But roster construction alone isn’t going to win a playoff series, and this particular playoff series is not yet over. “I mean, I haven’t heard the fat lady sing yet,” Payton Tolle said last night. “So we’re just going to keep going out there. I believe in us. So it’s going to be fun to watch these guys compete tomorrow.” (Christopher Smith, MassLive)
