NEW YORK – Finally – FINALLY – we have a postseason series worthy of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry.
For the unindoctrinated whose awareness of the most storied on-field feud in sports has been limited to the last 20 years (along with one of the 35 documentary series on 2004), welcome! Through two thrilling, sickening, squirming days, the Red Sox and Yankees have taken their fight back onto a high-wire in a fashion befitting their memorable history.
On Wednesday night, the Yankees claimed a taut, punch-counterpunch Game 2 victory to tie the best-of-three Wild Card Series and force Game 3 on Thursday night at Yankee Stadium (8:08 p.m., ESPN). In the process, the two teams offered a long-awaited reminder of the dynamic that elevated so many of their past showdowns, particularly 1949, 1978, 2003, and 2004.
The subsequent years featured some great teams – including Red Sox championship runs in 2007, 2013, and 2018, as well as one for the Yankees in 2009 – but the head-to-head postseason matchups of the teams weren’t worthy of the Netflix Special treatment.
The 2021 Wild Card Game was noteworthy for the explosively loud Fenway crowd, but the game itself – a 6-2 Red Sox win in the last one-and-done iteration of the wild card round – was never competitive. The best-of-five ALDS in 2018 featured a flicker of uncertainty when the Yankees won Game 2 at Fenway Park to tie the series, but the historically excellent Sox’ 16-1 steamrolling in Game 3 on the way to a four-game advance took the mystery out of the outcome.
This series has been spectacularly different. Through two games, there have been 145 plate appearances. In 136 of those (94 percent), the tying or go-ahead run(s) have been either on base or at the plate. The games have not permitted a moment when players could breathe or for fans could turn away.
Caveat: In 2025, this postseason series features two teams that are flawed and vulnerable in ways that some of the mythologized rivalry classics were not. In the most storied of past confrontations, the Sox and Yankees met at times when they seemed to lord over the rest of the American League like 7-footers showing up in a grade-school gym.
This year, both are wild card teams in an expanded playoff field, with the Yankees having won 94 games in the regular season and the Sox 89. There are shortcomings in both rosters.
Those reservations don’t diminish the sense that the two teams are engaged in a jousting match in which they’re tasked with trying to spear each other while riding unicycles on the edge of a cliff.
The spectacle of Garrett Crochet’s 117-pitch dominance in Game 1 – a contest that required Aroldis Chapman to Houdini his way out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam in the ninth inning of a 3-1 contest – gave way in Wednesday’s Game 2 to a dizzyingly different script.
Sox manager Alex Cora, not one to shy from high-stakes postseason gambles, made a dramatic decision to yank Brayan Bello after just 2 1/3 innings in a 2-2 game. The Yankees’ lefthanded hitters hadn’t been fooled by anything he’d thrown, going 3-for-6 with a homer and walk to that point, and so the Sox elected to damn the torpedoes – and potentially exhaust their bullpen in the process – to turn the contest into a Johnny Wholestaff affair.
That approach represented the application of wisdom Cora received in the 2018 postseason from former Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski.
“The old man,” Cora laughed affectionately. “Dave is going to kill me for that one.”
The advice?
“There’s no tomorrow,” said Cora. “Win today and then we will see where we are at the next day. Are you going to win every game? No. But you have to give yourself a chance every single night.”
Cora has always managed accordingly. He pushed Nathan Eovaldi to 97 pitches out of the bullpen in Game 3 of the 2018 World Series in an eventual loss – sacrificing his Game 4 starter, but saving his bullpen to position the Sox to close out a championship.
Cora yanked starter Eduardo Rodriguez in the second inning of Game 1 of the 2021 ALDS against the Rays (a loss), then pulled Chris Sale after just one inning in Game 2 of the same series – in a game the Sox eventually won, 14-6, to set in motion a stunning upset.
He improvised again on Wednesday, and the bet didn’t pay off. Garrett Whitlock fatigued at the end of his longest outing of the year, Austin Wells drilled a single down the right-field line on which Jazz Chisholm Jr. scored from first, and the Yankees won, 4-3 – setting up Thursday’s winner-take-all contest with the Red Sox bullpen on fumes.
Whitlock threw more pitches (47) than he’d thrown in any game this year. Is he available on Thursday?
“I’m definitely not going to take the ball out of my own hand,” he said.
Justin Wilson (1 2/3 innings) had his longest outing since June. Is he available?
“Yeah. It could be our last game, so might as well leave it all out there,” he said. “I don’t think any of us are either shocked or surprised or worried about how much we throw. We’re just ready.”
Even so, there’s little question the Sox are depleted.
“Of course it’s not ideal,” catcher Carlos Narváez said of the state of the Sox bullpen. “But these guys are warriors.”
Indeed, it is the idea of two closely matched teams exploring their competitive limits that offers the best sort of October theater.
“This is more than a wild card game. This feels like the LCS,” said Narváez. “It’s gonna be rocking. We love that. We embrace it.”
So should we all.
Alex Speier can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @alexspeier.
