Uh, oh.
All season long, the optimistic view of the Boston Red Sox has been that if everything goes right, they are just as strong a threat as any team in the wide-open American League playoffs. For a beautiful month and a half this summer, they showed exactly what this curious roster assembled by chief baseball officer Craig Breslow was capable of, all but securing an AL Wild Card spot by late August.
But when everything didn't go right -- as was the case for most of the season -- these Red Sox weren't merely non-contenders. They were non-competitive. And Tuesday revealed what happens when the absolute worst comes to pass: Everything goes terribly wrong, all at once.
All the concerns that were raised about this team from the very start came to fruition in Game 1 of the AL Wild Card Series against the New York Yankees, leading to a defeat that was somehow even more worrisome than the 9-0 final score.
Nothing is more concerning than Roman Anthony leaving the game with a flare-up of discomfort in the hand that caused him to miss much of the year due to injury. Anthony, who was replaced by Andruw Monasterio, didn't even bother to stick around the clubhouse to speak with reporters after the game. It was that sort of lack of accountability that led some to whisper that the real reason the Red Sox banished Anthony to Florida for a portion of his rehab earlier this season was as punishment for his unprofessionalism. A short elimination series against your top rival is no time to give new air to such rumors.
Anthony was absent for Boston's oft-mentioned July surge, however, so his departure alone shouldn't have sunk the Red Sox in Game 1. Unfortunately for the Red Sox, everything else did.
Trevor Story's inability to take a pitch finally turned into a problem. Caleb Durbin, who the Red Sox have celebrated as this year's success story, hasn't hit the ball out of the infield outside of a three-week stretch in the early summer. Willson Contreras, whose intensity and passion is his greatest superpower during the regular season, is self-defeating in the postseason; his career .713 playoff OPS is more than .100 points worse than his career .821 regular season OPS.
Reliever Erik Miller can't miss bats and Brayan Bello is a Goldilocks pitcher -- he needs everything juuuuuuust right in order to pitch competently. And, as usual, where do we even begin with Jarren Duran?
Losing a game does not equate to losing a series, but Game 1 was more than a normal loss for the Red Sox. For a time, the Red Sox played well above their heads and convinced a lot of us that that was who they truly were. A different version showed up in New York, though, and it's worth wondering if this is the real one.