BOSTON — The Red Sox are guaranteed at least two playoff games after clinching their wild card berth Friday night. Alex Cora thinks they have a reasonably good shot to play many more than they’re guaranteed.
The Red Sox entered their final game of the regular season knowing they’ll be the road team in Game 1 of a Wild Card series that will begin in either New York, Toronto or Cleveland on Tuesday at either 1:08 p.m. or 6:08 p.m. ET. Boston will throw ace Garrett Crochet on Tuesday. That Boston can throw a Cy Young candidate in the first game of a best-of-three — something few other teams can do — is one reason Cora thinks the Red Sox might go all the way.
“We’ve got a chance,” Cora said before Sunday’s game. “Offensively, we’re doing a lot of good things. The bullpen is a lot better than the last few years. I think having that No. 1 helps. We know we’re going on the road. We know it’s Garrett on Tuesday. So we’ll have a pretty good chance.”
“They (the front office) did an amazing job putting this together. Are we perfect? No we’re not,” Cora said. “But I don’t think there’s a perfect team out there, to be honest with you.”
Cora will manage in the postseason for the third time after winning the World Series in 2018 and taking Boston to Game 6 of the 2021 ALCS, where they lost to the Astros. This year’s postseason is the first the Red Sox will participate in since MLB expanded the field to 12 teams and changed the format in 2022. In 2021, the Sox were a wild card team that had to beat the Yankees in a one-off Wild Card Game to advance to the ALDS. This time, it’s not a do-or-die situation the first time the Sox take the field.
“This is the first time we have played in this tournament, two out of three in the first round,“ said Cora. ”I don’t have experience with it.
“It’s probably more comfortable than the one-game thing. The one-game (setup), it’s great. Regardless of the outcome, that day was like, ‘Oh, (expletive), you lose and you’re out. It’s a tough one but it’s a fun one. This is different, of course.”
In 2018, the Red Sox were the favorite to win it all with a stacked roster that won 108 regular season games. In 2021, the club limped into the postseason and didn’t clinch until the final day of the regular season. That didn’t preclude Boston from coming within two wins of a trip to the Fall Classic, giving Cora a reminder that anything can happen.
He feels like something similar is possible four years later.
“We got to where we wanted to,” he said. “Now we’re gonna go.”
“Just go out there and play hard, do our thing and see where it takes us.”
No matter how Boston’s season ends, Cora believes the club took a big step forward, in large part due to young, homegrown pitchers like Hunter Dobbins, Connelly Early, Payton Tolle, Richard Fitts and others coming up and pitching well.
“Looking at the year, I knew we were in a good place organization-wise, and player development-wise,” Cora said. “But the pitching part of it is like, ‘Wow, this could be fun for a lot of years.’ There’s some good arms. I mentioned it last year that we had more than three good players. This can be Cleveland, Houston, Tampa, (with homegrown pitching) right? If you can develop your own pitching, you can use your resources to get something else understanding you’re really good.”
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