Red Sox 6, Rays 3: Harrison’s heorics

It took a while, and he looked terrible in the minors for a while, but when the Red Sox needed him most, Kyle Harrison showed up with confidence. The Rafael Devers trade was still an objectively bad return, in my opinion, but it’s nice to know that we can still have nice things (at least for now) in 2025.

He’s still working on his pitch mix, the breaking balls specifically, but even with that, he was able to heavily rely on his fastball(s) for a solid outing with limited damage allowed. His changeup is still certifiably bad, but he luckily and strategically only threw four all game. The more recently developed slurve was a bit all over the place and accounted for two of his four hits allowed, but filled the zone or at least baited batters to swing enough to be a successful tertiary pitch.

It will obviously be both interesting and crucial to see how he performs further down the stretch, but he truly provided exactly what the Red Sox needed after a skid followed by an offensive explosion, which turned into a much too long game yesterday.

The offense kept the ball rolling with 10 hits and a lot of early traffic, which was frequently stranded. But both Alex Bregman and Mastaka Yoshida made up for leaving runners in scoring position with two outs by driving in a crucial run later in the night. Trevor Story provided the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth on the same day that I received my knockoff Trevor Story 2025 city connect jersey (coincidence? I think not.) before Yoshida brought him in with an RBI single.

I’m willing to currently declare Yoshida as kind of back at this moment (considering the rest of the available cast among this lineup), and am generally supportive of him hitting in the top half of the lineup. Outside of Justin Wilson’s general all-over-the-placeness, the bullpen put up a solid back two innings to keep the game tied and give Boston the opportunity to go ahead in the top of the ninth.

I will still be on the verge of an anxiety attack for every single remaining regular-season game, but this win is definitely a feather in the hat for what looked like a team that was dead in the water. The Guardians are, unfortunately, an unreal baseball team and may never lose again, but luckily for the Red Sox, the Astros/Mariners/Rangers should take care of each other in the final week and change. Fangraphs currently gives the Sox an 89.3% chance to make the playoffs, which is encouraging with the past couple of game results for Boston’s questionable lineup.

Trevor Story

My glorious king continues to stunt on the haters. I’m not saying that me finally ordering his jersey has something to do with this, but I’m not NOT saying that.

Alex Bregman

Though he grounded into an early double-play in the midst of an out-of-control inning from Adrian Houser, he redeemed himself with the lead-taking RBI in the fifth before keeping the line moving, leading to Yoshida’s RBI single, in the ninth.

Romy Gonzalez/Masatake Yoshida

Though I didn’t mention him in the article, Gonzalez actually had the highest WPA of any Red Sox tonight as he drove in the final run of the game on a sac fly, scored a run, picked up two hits and drew a walk in a very successful night at the plate. But I couldn’t not include Yoshida, simply because I’m proud of his improvement from hitting a ground ball to second every at-bat.

I don’t know if “duds” is really a good term, but Carlos Narvaez and Nate Eaton both struggled at the plate tonight as the only two starters without a hit, while Justin Wilson’s two earned runs in 0.2 IP were an outing to forget.

0 Comments