And just like that, it’s football season…
The Boston Red Sox’s 2024 season didn’t officially end on Sunday afternoon following a 7-5 defeat that sealed a three-game sweep at the hands of Arizona.
But it sure felt like the Sox just handed over the first nail that will inevitably be pounded into their coffin…
The pitching? Not nearly good enough to win with, but good enough to revive fears of a rotation-wide regression. The offense? Not clutch enough. Boston put up runs in spots this series, but only two in the seventh inning or later — all while being outscored 23-8 over the weekend.
Eugenio Suárez overcomes the Green Monster to put the @Dbacks on top! pic.twitter.com/zmXjl4iKkO
— MLB (@MLB) August 25, 2024
The only saving grace is that both Kansas City and Minnesota lost to keep Boston’s deficit at 4 1/2 games in the AL wild card hunt. Yet for a team that’s 14-20 since the All-Star break, that feels like it’s of little solace.
But of course, Alex Cora isn’t giving up the faith just yet (publicly, anyway)…
“We’ve been playing a lot of good teams, and we’ve beat good teams over the week,” Cora said. “We went to Baltimore, split with them. We went to Houston and won the series. They (Arizona) played better than us in this (series).”
It’s true that the Sox have beaten good teams throughout the season, but not with enough consistency. It’s crunch time now, and the time for pounding one’s chest and pointing to the past is over. It’s do or die, and you have to play like everything is on the line — because it is.
Tanner Houck, for one, possesses that mindset — the results just haven’t been very favorable of late.
“(I’ll) go out there and I’ll take the ball as long as they’ll let me go,” said Houck, who was knocked around for six runs on seven hits with four walks over six innings in Sunday’s loss. “Regardless of whatever tomorrow brings, I know that as a team we’ll kind of handle that. But we’re worried about today in the moment.”
The crux of it all is this: Boston entered the weekend being the team that needed to play with a greater sense of urgency — instead, they were outclassed and outgunned by a team with better talent and, frankly, a better championship resolve.
“Hopefully at the end of the year, we can say that we are (the best team in baseball),” D’backs manager and former interim Sox skipper and bench coach Torey Lovullo said. “I think there’s a lot of confidence in that clubhouse. They know what they’re capable of doing every single day and showing up.”
Raffy hits 200
And just like that, Rafael Devers has reached 200 career home runs…
Devers’ three-run blast to stake Boston a 4-0 lead in the fourth inning made him the first player in Red Sox franchise history to reach the milestone before turning 28 years old.
200 homers for Raffy! 🍦 pic.twitter.com/xV0831fVjP
— MLB (@MLB) August 25, 2024
“Incredible player, incredible talent,” Houck said of Devers. “(I’m) excited to watch him do his thing for, you know, the next 10-plus years. Incredible milestone for him.”
(As a quick aside, it sure sounds like Houck is planning to be around for the better part of those 10 years. The last we heard from him on the matter was back in May when he said he was open to an extension. The plot thickens…)
Some in the media have brought up a point related to this milestone that bears mentioning. The great Ted Williams missed three full seasons for military service before he turned 28 years old. It’s certainly fair to think he would have been the first to reach that benchmark had things not played out that way…
But it happened the way it happened, and there’s no need to diminish Devers what Devers just accomplished. Whether or not he was the first to do it, the second to do it, the only other Sox player since Ted Williams to do it… it all sounds pretty historic to me.
Swing of beauty. pic.twitter.com/WOBP5sln1Q
— Red Sox (@RedSox) August 25, 2024
Devers may have ranked highly among the top 50 international prospects when he signed (with a nice signing bonus of $1.5 million) with the Red Sox as a 16 year old in August of 2013, but that doesn’t mean he had anything handed to him. The Dominican sensation toiled away in the minors just like anyone else, and he earned his promotion to the big league roster in 2017.
One thing that stood out about Devers’ ascension to Boston was his attitude — at least in Lovullo’s eyes.
“I watched Raffy a lot in the minors and he was still coming and he was developing and we knew that he was on his way,” Lovullo told me when I asked him for his thoughts on the player Devers has become.
“Unfortunately I didn’t spend a lot of time with him here at the big league level (Devers debuted in 2017 while Lovullo left the team in 2016), but it’s an amazing accomplishment. And I know what he’d probably say to you is that ‘We lost the game. I hit my 200th and I’m not satisfied.’ He’s just such a professional kid, and that was one of the things that I remember about him.”
Devers is only in the first year of his 10-year extension with the Sox, and Lovullo — and all of us, really — are expecting plenty more homers to come.
“He’s got a long way to go,” Lovullo said. “He’s gonna hit a couple hundred more before his career is over. He’s got a great swing and a great mindset.”
Gethin Coolbaugh is a columnist for Boston Sports Journal. Follow him @GethinCoolbaugh on X/Twitter.