Ready or Not, October Is Coming
A week ago, the message was pretty simple: forget what it looks like. Forget style points. Forget expecting the Red Sox to suddenly become a steady, predictable baseball team. Just get into the playoffs.
Well, they appear to be taking that advice very seriously.
Perhaps a little too seriously.
These Red Sox are hurtling toward October in the least relaxing way possible. One night they look like a team nobody will want to face. The next afternoon they look like they accidentally wandered into a pennant race and would like directions back home. There are dominant pitching performances, inexplicable offensive disappearances, late-inning comebacks and losses so ugly you start questioning everything again.
Sometimes all of that happens in the same series.
They were embarrassed by the Yankees, including a 16-1 loss that felt worse than the score, which is saying something. Then they dropped a series to Seattle, although they somehow pulled out a completely ridiculous 9-8 win in 10 innings along the way. Just when it looked like the wheels might finally be coming loose, they went to Baltimore and swept four games.
Of course they did.
The sweep pushed Boston to 79-65 and put some distance between the Red Sox and the teams chasing them for an American League Wild Card spot. More importantly, it stopped what was beginning to feel like a real September slide.
This is who they are. Up. Down. Great. Terrible. Occasionally both.
And now, somehow, they are getting close enough to the postseason that we have to stop asking whether they belong there and start asking what they might actually do once they arrive.
The encouraging answer starts with the pitching.
Sonny Gray looks ready.
Not just ready to pitch in October, either. Ready to take the ball in Game 1 and make everyone else feel a little bit better about the situation. Gray shut out Baltimore for seven innings Saturday, allowing only three hits while striking out seven. It was his major league-leading 17th win of the season.
That is not a nice comeback story or a veteran hanging around and giving the team some decent innings. That is an ace.
Maybe not the ace the Red Sox expected to rely upon when the season began, but plans changed a long time ago. Garrett Crochet got hurt. The rotation was forced to reinvent itself. Young pitchers were promoted faster than anyone expected. Gray has become the stabilizing presence in the middle of all of it.
When everything else around this team begins spinning out of control, Gray slows the game back down.
Payton Tolle might be doing the same thing, only with a lot more velocity and a lot less experience.
Tolle finished the Baltimore sweep by allowing one run over six innings and striking out 12 without walking anyone. Twelve. In September. In the middle of a playoff race. On the road. The rookie improved to 9-6, and the Red Sox have now won 10 of his last 11 starts.
We are past the point of calling this a promising glimpse.
Tolle is in the rotation. He should be in the playoff rotation. If the Red Sox play a three-game Wild Card series, it is getting harder to imagine anyone other than Gray, Ranger Suárez and Tolle getting those starts.
That seemed almost ridiculous a few months ago. Now it feels obvious.
Ranger also answered his own question Friday night. After getting knocked around by the Yankees, he threw seven scoreless innings in a 1-0 victory over Baltimore. He allowed five hits, walked one and needed only 91 pitches.
That was exactly what the Red Sox needed from him. Not just because they needed the win, but because they needed to see Ranger look like Ranger again. One bad start happens. One terrible game at Yankee Stadium doesn’t erase an entire season. Still, with October getting closer, every shaky outing from a starting pitcher starts feeling like a warning.
He answered it.
Jake Bennett did, too, even if his line wasn’t as clean. Bennett gave the Red Sox six innings in the opener at Baltimore, allowing three runs and striking out seven. The Orioles hit back-to-back home runs against him, but he didn’t unravel. He stayed in the game, finished six and gave the offense enough time to come back. Boston eventually won 6-5.
That matters.
October starts are not always seven shutout innings. Sometimes the most important thing a pitcher can do is keep a bad inning from becoming the inning that ends the game. Bennett did that. For a rookie carrying a workload unlike anything he has experienced before, it was another encouraging sign.
So yes, the rotation might actually be ready.
Gray is pitching like an ace. Suárez just delivered his best response. Tolle looks completely unafraid. Bennett keeps showing that he can survive when he doesn’t have everything.
And then there is Crochet.
Will he be back?
Maybe. But we should probably stop imagining him returning as the Garrett Crochet who can give the Red Sox six or seven innings in a playoff game. There simply isn’t enough time to build him back into a starter.
He threw 16 pitches off a mound Friday, his first mound session in more than three months. That is real progress, especially considering how doubtful any return looked earlier this summer. But there are still several steps remaining. If he does make it back, it would almost certainly be as a reliever.
And honestly? That could still be huge.
Imagine Crochet entering in the sixth or seventh inning of a playoff game, throwing as hard as he can without worrying about pacing himself through a lineup three times. Add Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman behind him and, suddenly, the Red Sox could shorten games in a way they haven’t been able to all season.
But that is still an “if.” A very large one.
The bigger concern might be the offense, because nobody seems to know which version will show up.
Boston scored six runs in the Baltimore opener, then one run Friday, five Saturday and three Sunday. They swept the series, but two of those wins were carried almost entirely by the pitching staff. The Red Sox went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position during the 1-0 victory.
That approach works when Suárez throws seven shutout innings.
It becomes considerably less charming when he doesn’t.
Roman Anthony and Trevor Story are back, and yes, it matters. Anthony missed nearly four months with the hand and wrist injury, while Story had been out since May following sports hernia surgery. Both returned August 30, and both started hitting immediately.
Anthony had two hits in his first game back, then tripled in the ninth inning of the wild win over Seattle. He homered in the Baltimore opener. Story delivered the walk-off hit against Seattle, then collected three hits and scored twice behind Gray on Saturday.
They make the lineup deeper. They give Chad Tracy more options. Anthony changes at-bats simply because pitchers know how much damage he can do. Story, when healthy, adds a veteran who has been through September games and understands that every important moment does not require the impossible.
But their return does not automatically fix everything.
They can help carry the offense. They cannot be expected to carry all of it.
Which brings us to Mickey Gasper.
Seriously, where did this come from?
The Red Sox claimed Gasper off waivers from Washington in February. He bounced between Boston and Worcester. He was optioned on August 30 and recalled one day later. Now he has eight home runs in 156 at-bats, an .887 OPS and, for a couple of weeks, has looked like one of the most dangerous hitters in the lineup.
Gasper homered in his return against Seattle. Then he hit the only home run — and drove in the only run — of Boston’s 1-0 win Friday. Over his last 15 games, he is hitting .333 with five home runs and a .536 on-base percentage.
Mickey Gasper. Of course.
Every strange playoff run needs somebody like this. A player almost nobody counted on, suddenly taking enormous at-bats in September. We have seen it before. The big names get most of the attention, but postseason teams are often pushed forward by somebody who wasn’t part of the original plan.
Maybe Gasper cools off tomorrow. Baseball tends to take these fun little stories away just as quickly as it gives them to us. But he has already helped keep this team moving when several more familiar hitters weren’t doing much of anything.
And that is the real story of these Red Sox.
Anthony and Story came back to a team that had already saved its season without them.
Crochet is trying to return to a pitching staff that somehow rebuilt itself while he was gone.
Gasper appeared from nowhere. Gray became an ace. Tolle and Bennett grew up faster than expected. The roster has been rearranged so many times that the original blueprint barely matters anymore.
The Red Sox are still inconsistent. Still frustrating. Still capable of looking completely overmatched for two days and then sweeping a team four straight.
At this point, waiting for them to become something different seems pointless.
This is the team racing toward October.
Maybe the bats hold up. Maybe Crochet comes back and becomes a weapon out of the bullpen. Maybe Gray and the kids pitch well enough that none of the other questions matter.
Or maybe it ends quickly.
That possibility is still there. It always is.
But after everything that has happened this season, the Red Sox are now 18 games over .500 with 18 left to play. The playoffs are no longer some unlikely destination far in the distance.
They are almost here.
Ready or not.
Written by: Tim Hourihan
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