Entering the Division Series, the conventional wisdom was the Red Sox hitters were in for a tough matchup against Tampa Bay's stable of young, hard-throwing pitchers who were so good that the Rays lost ace Tyler Glasnow in August and the team got better.
The stats certainly backed that up.
The Rays' 3.67 ERA ranked fourth in the majors and led the AL. They ended the regular season having yielded four runs (or fewer) in 16 consecutive games. Tampa's starters had a majors-best 2.41 ERA in 24 games from Sept. 7th through the end of the season, and the bullpen had a 3.23 ERA, best in the AL and third in the majors behind the Giants (2.97) and Dodgers (3.12).
So it was of little surprise that in Game 1 of the series, the Red Sox were shut out 5-0. They did outhit the Rays 9-6 — foreshadowing alert — but there wasn't one extra-base hit, they grounded into two inning-ending double plays, and didn't have back-to-back hits until the eighth inning.
It felt like the greatest fears about the Rays' staff were coming to fruition. It felt like this was going to be an uphill, if not impossible, battle.
Yeah, that lasted about a day.
Game 2: Red Sox 14, Rays 6 as Boston pounded out 20 hits, including a team-record five home rums.
Game 3: Red Sox 6, Rays 4. Boston posted 15 hits.
Game 4: Red Sox 6, Rays 5. Boston slugged 12 hits.
After the five runs the Rays scored in the first inning of Game 2, the Red Sox outscored the Rays 24-10 and outhit them 43-23 to win the series 3-1 and advance to the ALCS.
Talk about a turnaround.
"Well, look, I think they had a pretty relentless approach at the plate," said Rays manager Kevin Cash. "We just could not create that swing and miss that we've done so well throughout the regular season. They really had a good approach. It felt like there was constant pressure. There were no easy outs. For us being a team that seems to strike a lot of guys out, we did not rack up the strikeouts like we typically do."
Alex Cora was flattered by the comments and said the Red Sox' turnaround at the plate was the result of a lot of hard work.
"It's huge because at one point during the season, we were chasing 38 percent of the pitches and we were swinging and missing at a horrible rate," he said. "Even 10 days ago, when we went to Baltimore and then we went to Washington, we were striking out a lot. We were chasing a lot of pitches.
"I think playing (the Rays) 19 times, it helped. It helped. We played the Yankees. We knew them. They know us. Same thing with them. We did a good job staying humble. I think that's the word. Stay humble. Stay humble with your approach. Don't try to do too much, and good things happen."
Did they ever. In baseball parlance, a good OPS — on-base plus slugging — is anything over .800.
The Red Sox finished the Rays series with seven — seven! — players well over .800:
Kiké Hernández 1.329
J.D. Martinez 1.200
Rafael Devers 1.067
Christian Vazquez .938
Kyle Schwarber .889
Xander Bogaerts .868
Alex Verdugo .842
Yup, relentless.
"Even you think about (Game 3), they had a big hit in a clutch situation, and then tonight they got runners on. Runner on third, less than two outs, would have loved to try to have something go our way right there, but that wasn't the case," said Rays outfield Kevin Kiermaier. "I go back to Game 2 when we got a 5-2 lead, I believe it was, and I made that catch. We had everything going our way, and then they hit some very clutch homers shortly after that to get them back in the game. Then they scored 14 more runs after that, it seemed like, that game. I feel like if we would have got two or three shutdown innings right there, it's crazy how momentum works in baseball and just the flow of the game. You can't explain it, this game makes no sense whatsoever, but they had big at-bats when it counted, when they were down one game to nothing early in that second game.
"Now here I am looking back, and I think that was kind of the turning point, and they won Game 3, and beat us tonight. They were a really good team. We knew they were going to be dangerous, and we had to play our best. This is a Division Series. The first one to win three games wins, and they deserved to win. They were a little bit better than us. Once again, you just tip your cap to them."
Game 4 at the plate went almost exactly the way the series went.
All of the top seven hitters contributed in some fashion.
Schwarber didn't have a hit but he walked ahead of Devers' three-run bomb.
Hernandez had a single and walked it off with his sac fly.
Devers continued to be the one-arm bandit, with three hits and the homer.
Bogaerts keep the pressure on Tampa after Devers' blast by singling and then scoring on Verdugo's RBI double that made it 4-0.
Martinez had two hits, including a rope that plated Verdugo to run it to 5-0 and bounced Shane McClanahan after two-thirds of an inning.
Vazquez led off the third and ninth with singles and scored both times.
"Going down the series 1-0, it's just like we need to find a way to have a 1 through 9 approach," said Hernandez. "We need to have a team approach, and we need to all get on the same page and do the same thing and attack the same way. That's kind of what we did. Playoff baseball, sometimes, if you don't let the moment get too big, it kind of brings the best out of people. We were able to lock it in and make better decisions on the pitches that we wanted to swing at, we wanted to attack, the zones we wanted to attack. It started off with Game 2 and kind of like went on the next two games."
And right onto the ALCS.
Which vaunted pitching staff is next?