There’s no way to guarantee Sonny Gray will pitch well when he takes the mound for the Red Sox in a postseason game at the end of the month. However, giving him extra rest going into the September stretch run and seeing him respond by pitching fantastic against a good lineup on the road fighting for their postseason lives certainly feels good right now.
It took Gray just 92 pitches to spin his silky, seven shutout frames this evening, and while the Orioles did manage a few opportunities with a runner in scoring position (they went 0-8), it never felt like Gray was in any real trouble.
If you want to know part of what makes Gray so good and how he keeps guys off balance, look no further than our own Jake Roy, who broke down Gray’s two early strikeouts to Encarnacion-Strand (a guy who had a 1.020 OPS in his last 11 games coming into tonight).
But tonight wasn’t just about Gray, it was about what was fueling him and the entire Red Sox clubhouse.
Last night, Blaze Alexander got very animated following an incident in which he reached out to grab Nick Sogard on an eighth inning double play. The Sox took exception in the moment as both benches cleared, and they apparently took that umbrage into the clubhouse overnight and brought it back today as a little extra motivation to extinguish whatever fading playoff hopes Baltimore has left.
“We want to bury those guys, especially after what that dude was trying to do last night,” Gray said after the game — Illustrating that even after two wins in 25 hours since that spicy moment, it was still fresh on everybody’s mind.
But we didn’t need to wait until after the game to know how the Sox felt on that front, because following Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s seventh inning double, he had a celebration aimed directly at the source of last night’s brouhaha:
It’s not just Kiner-Falefa either. Notice Nick Sogard (the target of Friday’s perceived attack on the pack) and Roman Anthony at the very tail end of the clip. They are loving it!
These guys absolutely had extended words about what went on during yesterday’s game in the clubhouse and rallied around it to draw even closer as a group. The smiles on their faces when Kiner-Falefa mocked Alexander in the middle of the diamond tells you everything you need to know about the chemistry inside those walls.
Want to know something else that great for team chemistry? A different guy contributing every night. Saturday’s game included a lineup that was missing Willson Contreras, Ceddanne Rafaela, Caleb Durbin, and Adley Rutschman, and also saw Roman Anthony go 0-5. So what happened? The bottom four guys combined to knock in all five runs in the game. When it’s a different guy every night, the whole group wants to take a sword for one another.
Again, there’s no way to guarantee what happened tonight will matter in a postseason game in a month, but it sure feels good right now.
Sonny Gray: Seven shutout innings is pretty much an automatic ticket here. He now has 17 wins on the season and a 2.69 ERA.
Eli White: He only had one hit, and it was just a single, but when White came to the plate with the bases loaded and two out in the top of the sixth, neither team has scored since the top of the first inning yesterday when Mickey Gasper homered. White’s hit here broke the stubborn seal, and gave the Sox a lead they would not relinquish.
Trevor Story: Three more hits tonight. He’s got at least one hit in all six games since returning, including multiple hits in four of those games. Please keep serving the crow! I’ll gladly eat it!
Roman Anthony: It was an unusually rough night for our boy, going 0-5 with three strike outs from the top spot in the lineup.
Jovani Moran: Came into the game in the eighth inning to face three batters and only got one of them out. Greg Weissert had to clean up his mess and prevent the high leverage guys from being needed in this game.
It’s Kinder-Falefa’s double and him mocking Blaze Alexander at the end of it. Here’s one more look, this time with the clips from both nights shown together:
