Red Sox saved a sinking season, but Yankees exposed the holes that never disappeared

For nearly three months, the Red Sox made it easy to forget how their season started.

They were once 14 games under .500 and seemingly headed toward another lost summer. Then something clicked, and Boston ripped off 15 consecutive wins, went 27-3 from the beginning of July into early August and, at one point, won 32 of 37 games.

Fenway Park had energy again, and the Red Sox were finding an identity after a horrific start to the season that saw their manager, Alex Cora, and his trusted coaches get fired.

The Red Sox went from a team that looked dead in the water to suddenly one of baseball’s best stories and convinced a region that maybe, just maybe, something special was happening right before everyone’s eyes. 

That run shouldn’t be forgotten because of what happened in the series sweep to the Yankees. But what happened in the Bronx shouldn’t be minimized because of that run, either.

For the second consecutive season, the Red Sox went to Yankee Stadium for the American League Wild Card Series and watched their season end there. Only this time, they didn’t even force a third game.

The Yankees beat them 9-0 in Game 1 and 9-2 in Game 2. Boston never led, only scoring two runs and collecting seven hits over 18 innings. Aaron Judge wasn’t on New York’s roster, and yet the Yankees still made Boston pay. 

“We didn’t play good at all,” Willson Contreras said. “We didn’t pitch. We didn’t hit. When you don’t have those two, it’s tough to win. They played better than us and that’s why they advanced.

“I’m really proud of this group. Whatever we did in the past stays in the past. But we have to get better for next year in every aspect of the game. We have to play better. That’s the bottom line.”

Isiah Kiner-Falefa was even more direct in his assessment of his team. 

“Obviously, not what any of us expected,” Kiner-Falefa said. “Uncompetitive two games. Got boat-raced. The better team won.”

Yes, Kiner-Falefa was right. The better team won, and a large part of that was because the Red Sox’ offense went cold long before they arrived in the Bronx.

Boston hit just .219/.295/.356 in September as it limped toward the postseason. The Red Sox never seemed to have their foot fully on the gas during the final month, although injuries certainly played a role.

Contreras and Ceddanne Rafaela missed stretches. Mickey Gasper went down during the Cubs series. The bullpen wasn't spared, either, with Tyron Guerrero and Justin Slaten unavailable for the postseason.

The Red Sox spent much of September trying to get healthy. But with a comfortable grip on the second Wild Card spot, there was also a sense that Boston had taken its foot off the pedal and believed it could simply fire the engine back up once the postseason arrived.

The offense that sputtered through September followed the Red Sox to Yankee Stadium for the entire world to see. 

“Regardless of all the special things that happened this summer, and there were quite a few, the goal is to win the World Series,” manager Chad Tracy said. “And that ended for us tonight. So, it’s frustrating. There are a lot of things you can say, but in the moment, right now, I think the guys only care that we lost. And it’s going to take some time to get over that.”

Here are five takeaways from another abrupt postseason exit and what they mean for where the Red Sox go from here.

1. The summer was real, but so were the warning signs (which most ignored)

The Red Sox played excellent baseball over the summer thanks to a 32-5 run that saved their season. During that 37-game stretch, Boston hit .258 with a .445 slugging percentage and created runs at a rate 15% better than league average.

Over the final 47 games, the Red Sox looked completely different than the club that was mowing down teams. They hit just .236 with a .382 slugging percentage; those numbers looked much more like the offense from the first 78 games. Those numbers are simply just not good enough for a team with World Series aspirations. 

Ironically, the Red Sox made the postseason but never made it to October. The Sox failed to get out of September following the sweep in the Bronx. 

Boston’s only runs against New York came on solo homers from Contreras and Nick Sogard in Game 2. Dating back to Game 2 of last year’s Wild Card Series, the Red Sox have scored two runs over their last 27 postseason innings. 

A year ago, the Red Sox won 89 games and hit one postseason homer, a solo shot. This year, they won 87 and hit two postseason homers. The lack of a legitimate power threat in the middle of the lineup was easy to spot during the season. Despite adding Adley Rutschman at the trade deadline, Boston still lacked a true power hitter to complement Contreras.

This offseason, or whatever that’ll look like with the impending lockout on the horizon, Craig Breslow must address adding another power bat. The collection of AAAA-players that occupied spots on the Sox' 26-man roster this season will not cut it for a second year in a row. 

2. The rotation gave Boston a chance; the bullpen decisions didn’t

If there was one reason to believe Boston could be dangerous in a short series, it was its pitching.

And the starters mostly did their jobs as Payton Tolle kept Boston in Game 1 and Sonny Gray did the same in Game 2.

Neither was allowed to finish the fifth inning. In both games, Tracy went to Erik Miller with two outs in the fifth and both times, the decision immediately produced another Yankees run.

Ben Rice homered off Miller after Tolle departed in Game 1 and then Cody Bellinger delivered an RBI single against him after Gray was removed in Game 2.

The Gray decision was hard to overlook: he allowed one run and was at 70 pitches when his skipper removed him with runners at the corners and Bellinger coming up. Gray had been Boston’s de facto ace while Garrett Crochet spent more than five months on the injured list.

Boston leaned on Gray in those situations all season. Then, with its season on the line, Tracy suddenly went away from what had worked.

He punted the feel of the game for analytics, and it was the type of decision that will be second-guessed throughout the offseason and a big reason the Red Sox will be playing golf this weekend and the foreseeable future. 

To Tracy's credit, he helped oversee the remarkable turnaround that got Boston into the postseason, and the organization rewarded him with a three-year contract. But his first October has left fans questioning whether the Red Sox were too quick to remove the interim tag and whether he was ready to manage under the brighter lights of the postseason.

While all that will be debated on sports radio and podcasts over the coming weeks, the veteran Gray certainly wasn't thrilled with his skipper's decision.

“I think I’m the best pitcher in the American League the third time through the order,” Gray said afterward. “I think that’s a fact. I would have liked to have been trusted in that moment.”

The numbers backed him up as Gray posted a 1.99 ERA over 45 1/3 innings when facing hitters for the third time this season. 

Now there's a chance that was his final appearance in a Red Sox uniform. The veteran's future is uncertain, and he was unwilling to commit to returning when asked after the loss.

Would he want to come back to Boston?

“I don’t know,” Gray said.

3. Crochet was never the same

For weeks, almost every Crochet update carried postseason implications. He played catch, completed bullpen sessions, and threw live batting practices. 

Boston felt he was ready to help the team and added him to the postseason roster. He finally returned to the mound when the Sox were three innings from elimination. 

Crochet hadn’t pitched in a game since April 25 when Tracy called on him for the sixth inning of Game 2. The Red Sox had just cut the deficit to one, courtesy of Contreras’ solo blast. 

His return unraveled almost immediately, beginning with a dropped third strike and a throwing error from Rutschman that allowed Spencer Jones to reach third, and then the Yankees eventually blew the game open.

Boston spent months trying to get Crochet healthy enough to contribute in October. He recorded one out, a strikeout, and allowed four earned runs on three hits. 

4. The comments afterward were almost as revealing as the losses

Gray’s frustration wasn’t the only notable comment inside the clubhouse. Contreras offered an interesting perspective when discussing the role of experience and information in winning baseball games.

“It’s not enough when you have talent or you have data or you have computers that’s telling you what to do. Because this is baseball,” Contreras said. “And the data is here to help us. But at the end of the day, you’re gonna have to need experience and veteran guys to win games.”

Contreras said he’s willing to speak with Breslow about the organization's use of analytics, which, reading between the lines, he sees as an issue. 

“At the end of the day, we can talk, we can share ideas, but like I said, I’m not making decisions,” Contreras said. “And we’re not going to make decisions. We are employees. We get paid to play baseball and we get paid to be out there on the field to perform. I mean, that’s the bottom line. Of course, we can have some conversations.”

Contreras said the data is “here to help.”

“But at the end of the day, it’s not about data. It’s about executing the game plan,” he added.

Put that alongside Gray saying he wanted to be trusted and Kiner-Falefa describing the series as “uncompetitive,” and there was plenty of frustration beyond simply losing two baseball games.

The veterans were speaking out, but does it really matter? Breslow had his club options picked up, and Tracy was named manager. Neither is going anywhere, and analytics is a fabric of the Red Sox organization, whether you like it or not. 

The answer to what went wrong this September (not October) isn’t abandoning data or pretending analytics don’t belong in baseball. Every successful organization uses them, like the Dodgers, Rays, Brewers, and so on. The question is how information, feel and trust coexist when a postseason game reaches its most important moments.

5. The Red Sox still have another step to take

The Red Sox deserve credit for what they accomplished. Fourteen games under .500 could have become 20, and a lost season could have become a sell-off at the trade deadline. Instead, they ripped off one of the best stretches of baseball the franchise has played in years and returned to the postseason.

Veteran shortstop Trevor Story wasn’t ready to dismiss what his teammates accomplished while he was on the shelf. 

“Obviously disappointed,” Story said. “A lot of thoughts, but proud of this group, proud of this team. With all the hate and everything going around, the way this team came together, we really turned the season around to get back into this position. It was something that was special.”

While the summer was special, Contreras was point-blank in his assessment of how things felt following the loss. 

“We were able to turn the season around, for sure, 100 percent,” he said. “But that’s not good enough.”

That’s probably the best way to remember the 2026 Red Sox. They were good but in the end, just not good enough. 

Since winning the World Series in 2018, the Red Sox have won one postseason series, the 2021 ALDS against Tampa Bay. They haven’t hosted a playoff game at Fenway Park since that year’s ALCS.

Last October, leaving Yankee Stadium after a three-game elimination at least felt like Boston had moved forward.

This year was supposed to be the next step. Instead, the Red Sox returned to the Bronx, lost twice, never held a lead and went home before the calendar even flipped to October.

Roman Anthony was supposed to be part of that big step forward but instead he was hurt for the majority of the season. He got “healthy” ahead of the playoffs and in Game 1, re-injured his wrist/hand and left the game. 

“The reason I left early last night to go get imaging was to put myself in a position to be ready to play today if I was able to,” Anthony said. “And with the results and with the imaging saying that I had basically done what I did earlier in the year and then added on strains in the hand as well, that was our calling to shut it down.”

He went back to Boston for imaging and it revealed that he re-aggravated the same injury that kept him out from May 5 through Aug. 29. 

“I feel sick to my stomach,” Anthony said. “I haven’t slept much. It doesn’t really feel real, to be honest. Again, I’ve been through so many different emotions and feelings throughout the course of this rehab process this year that to get the same news again and even worse, I don’t know. It’s hard to have an answer to anything right now.”

Anthony tore a ligament under his ring finger in the same hand on May 4, causing him to miss 101 games. He said he had dealt with discomfort during some swings since he returned from the injured list Aug. 30.

“The hand was never really fully 100% and as you would expect,” he said. “But I think for me, it was to a point where it was tolerable. And I was taking certain swings that were sketchy, and I was still able to come back and recover enough to just be in there every single day. But ultimately just took a few swings here recently where that wasn’t the case anymore.”

The hand felt worse during his first at-bat Tuesday facing Cam Schlittler. He wanted to take a second at-bat to see how it felt before deciding to leave the game.

“I’ve been experiencing some things with the swings and the check swings over the past six weeks,” Anthony said. “And last night just felt a little bit more intense, a little bit more harsh than past swings have and lingered a little bit longer. ... It was super alarming and it got to the point where it was tough to grip a bat. So knew then and there that this was a little bit more similar to the one earlier on in the year.”

Anthony is no longer a prospect, he’s been in the bigs in parts of the last two seasons and signed an extension with the club. If he can’t stay healthy, the Sox need to take a hard look at whether the juice is worth the squeeze with Anthony or if they should shop him around to help continue to balance its lineup for the future. 

The Work Isn't Finished

The quick postseason exit was disappointing, but it shouldn't take away from what the Red Sox accomplished this season.

They gave Boston a fun summer of baseball when they were the only show in town. The Red Sox gave fans a reason to watch again, filling Fenway Park with an energy that had been missing and turning a season that once appeared lost into something worth following every night.

That won't stop the criticism; this fan base will keep questioning the ownership group. Fans will take to social media and demand that John Henry sell the team. That's part of the territory when the Red Sox bow out of the postseason without winning a game.

But once the disappointment wears off, there's something else worth remembering.

The Red Sox are headed in the right direction... they're just not there yet.

Getting to the postseason can't be the finish line anymore. The next step is building a team capable of making a deep October run and bringing postseason baseball back to Fenway Park for the first time since 2021.

That's on Breslow and Henry now. A strong offseason, whatever an offseason looks like with a potential lockout looming, can move this team closer to becoming a legitimate World Series contender.

Then, hopefully, the Sox can do this all over again next February.