AL wild-card game: Eovaldi, Red Sox rise to the occasion to end Yankees' season

By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer

BOSTON — It was a laser beam.

In the sixth inning of Tuesday's American League wild-card game, Giancarlo Stanton did something he’d done 169 times before: rocket a ball 115 mph. The Yankees' slugger jumped all over a mediocre Ryan Brasier fastball and blasted one toward the Green Monster in deep left-center. As the ball fizzed through the air and slammed off Fenway’s iconic wall with a firm thud, another incredibly large man, Aaron Judge, huffed and puffed his way around the bases.

But Judge's giraffe-y, 6-foot-7 strides were not enough. Red Sox center fielder Kiké Hernández picked up the caromed pill and hurled it to his cutoff man, shortstop Xander Bogaerts, who swiftly flung it home to catcher Kevin Plawecki. Plawecki slapped his mitt down on the diving Judge, who tried and failed to contort his enormous frame around the tag.

Judge was out, and so were the Yankees. 

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If Judge had been safe, the Yanks would have been down just a run in the sixth, with only one out and a guy on second base. If he’d stayed at third, it would have been two on with one out and the Sox on the ropes. Instead, Judge was waved home to his doom. 

That was the ballgame, plain and simple.

From there, the Yankees had no shot. Boston’s bullpen shut things down, the Sox's offense added a few runs against an overextended Yankees pitching staff, and the cacophonous Fenway crowd never allowed the momentum to swing back toward the Bronx. 

For three seconds, while Stanton’s sixth-inning laser beam was in the air, there was a glimmer of hope, a brief window. Then it shut, closed for winter.

But even if Judge had slithered around that tag or Bogaerts had bobbled that relay, the cold fact of the matter is that Gerrit Cole did not rise to the moment. Rather, he crumbled beneath the weight of it. He was brought to New York to dominate games such as this, to pitch the Yankees deep into the frigid part of October. 

In his first meaningful test, Cole failed. He recorded just six outs and strolled off the mound in the third inning beneath a storm of Bostonians chanting "GEERRRR-IIIIIIT." It was at that moment that the Red Sox won, and the Yankees’ season was mercifully over. There was no coming back.

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The 2-1 offering that Bogaerts homered on in the bottom of the first might have been the single worst pitch of Cole’s career. A juicy, well-cooked meatball in a hitter’s count. A change-up that stayed the same. An 89 mph batting practice gopher ball, straight down the middle of the plate. In fact, I would've been concerned if Bogaerts hadn’t slammed it deep and gone to center. 

That pitch was the type of mistake a pitcher flat-out cannot make if he wants to build a legacy in October.

Speaking of October legacies, Red Sox starter Nathan Eovaldi added another chapter to his with a sparkling 5.1-inning performance Tuesday. Eovaldi has one of the league’s highest first-pitch strike percentages; he thrives by getting ahead in counts. The Yankees tried to counter this with an aggressive approach. On Eovaldi’s first time through the order, eight of the Yanks’ nine hitters swung at one of the first two pitches, and six of those nine swung at the very first pitch. Rather than trying to work Eovaldi’s pitch count up to get to the vulnerable part of the Sox's pen, the Yankees tried to blast Boston’s starter into submission early. 

It did not work.

Eovaldi was razor-sharp. The most reliable Boston starter all season rose to the occasion and delivered an outing the Red Sox desperately needed. He maintained splendid command of his upper-90s heater and kept the Yankees' potent offense off the bases. The only blemish was a sixth-inning, first-pitch homer from Anthony Rizzo on a poorly located, get-me-over, first-pitch curve that failed to curve. 

That tater was followed by a Judge infield single, which drew manager Alex Cora out of the dugout with a quick hook on Eovaldi. The most recent postseason game we witnessed saw Kevin Cash prematurely yank Blake Snell, much to the dismay of armchair Twitter managers everywhere. And when Cora called upon Ryan Brasier to dispatch Giancarlo Stanton, who at the time represented the tying run, the "let starters work deep into games" crowd emerged en force.

And they were almost right. Except Judge got thrown out on Stanton’s bullet off the wall, and Cora’s move was vindicated.

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The decision made sense in the moment, too: Stanton is New York’s most fearsome hitter, and Cora didn’t want Eovaldi facing him a third time with the potential to tie the game.

That meant Boston’s bullpen was asked to collect 11 outs, a relatively tall task considering its shakiness the past few weeks and particularly in Boston’s recent series against the Yankees. But Brasier, Tanner Houck, Hansel Robles and former Yankees farmhand Garrett Whitlock got the job done, with their only run allowed coming on yet another jaw-dropping Stanton rip in the ninth.

Stanton has been the Yankees’ best hitter the past few months and was again Tuesday, going 3-for-4 with two singles and a homer. He was the only Bronxite who looked like bombing, and he perhaps earned himself a boo-less 2022 from the Yankees faithful.

No one else, save maybe Judge, earned the same right. New York’s offense was prone to prolonged snoozes this season (they scored fewer runs than the Nats and the Twins), and the wild-card game turned out to be a night for napping. The Yankees will be good again in 2022, with some new faces, perhaps a new manager and the same lingering questions about Gerrit Cole.

Boston, meanwhile, earned the right to continue its season Thursday in Tampa Bay. The Red Sox's best hitters out-slugged the Yankees not named Giancarlo. Kyle Schwarber hit a tater on a 97 mph fastball above the strike zone. Alex Verdugo drove in three. Eovaldi was as awesome as one could ask for. Boston's good players played well; the same cannot be said for the Yankees. 

Try again next year, fellas. Bronxie the Turtle, you can come live with me.

Jake Mintz is the louder half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. You can follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.