Mastrodonato: With Alex Cora’s magic touch, playoff Red Sox look better than they have all year

The Red Sox have arrived.

Finally, after two-plus months of mediocre baseball, the Red Sox showed up to play their best game of the season at the most important time on Tuesday as they steamrolled the New York Yankees, 6-2, to become one of the final four teams remaining in the American League.

These aren’t the Red Sox of August and September, who played just good enough to limp into the postseason as one of the two Wild Card teams.

And these aren’t the Red Sox of April through July, the team that surprised us all by winning close games, winning come-from-behind games and winning extra-inning games as they sat in first place for most of the first half.

Tuesday night, the Red Sox showed up to a Fenway Park crowd that hasn’t been this raucous and energetic in years. And they played like a team that hadn’t been that focused and confident in years.

“Doesn’t matter who is playing, who is not playing,” Cora said. “If we show up, we are going to play. And regardless of the result we are going to be happy with the way we go about our business. Sometimes it looks horrible. But 93 times a year it hasn’t looked horrible, so we’re going to keep rolling.”

This was a route.

Nathan Eovaldi looked like a man on a mission from the very first pitch. He sliced through the Yankees’ top of the order in the first inning on just 11 pitches, throwing nine strikes. His fastball touched 100 mph and sat at 98-99, easily the highest average velocity of the season.

He was amped up, but he wasn’t wild. He was as sharp as he’s ever been. And while he couldn’t grip his breaking ball the last time he played the Yankees, when he allowed seven runs, he had everything working with a five-pitch mix of magic that turned a high-powered Yankees offense into dust.

“We learned a lot last week,” Cora said of Eovaldi’s poor outing in his previous start.

Gerrit Cole wasn’t great, and it was clear from the beginning that Cora’s newly-shaped lineup had his number.

Cora thought by putting Kyle Schwarber first and Rafael Devers third, the Yankees would pitch to Schwarber but work around Devers. He was right, as Cole wanted nothing to do with Devers with nobody on base and two outs in the first.

Cole walked Devers, then made one mistake to Xander Bogaerts, leaving a changeup over the middle of the plate that Bogaerts hammered 400-plus feet over the center-field wall.

For a player who hadn’t been feeling good about his swing for “longer than a couple weeks,” Bogaerts might’ve been the MVP of this game with a two-run homer in the first and a beautifully-executed throw to home plate to nail Aaron Judge in the sixth, when the Yankees were trying to claw back.

“Talk about big plays by a big player tonight in Xander,” Schwarber said. “Big homer, and Kiké Hernandez with the great relay to him, to be able to keep that — if I could label play of the game, that would be play of the game for me, where Xander holes him down at the plate and keeps it from a 3-1 game instead of a 3-2 game.”

Working with a lead, Eovaldi only grew stronger.

He carved his way through the Yankees lineup while the Fenway crowd seemed to get more excited and confident with every out as he struck out eight and allowed just one run on four hits.

While another manager might’ve ticked off the entire New England region by taking Eovaldi out of the game after just 71 pitches, Cora pulled the trigger without a worry.

“When I went to the mound, he gave me this look, like, ‘what are you doing?’ Cora said. “But it’s just such a tough game to manage.”

Eovaldi looked stunned, as did the entire ballpark.

“It’s definitely frustrating but obviously I understand the situation and everything,” he said. “Third time through the lineup, it’s tough. Batter seeing you for the third time, they have a better understanding of what you’re going to do and a better idea of how you’re going to attack them.

“I get it. Obviously in that situation, I didn’t want to come out.”

Cole and Eovaldi were statistically the two most valuable starting pitchers in the league this year. Yet they combined to throw just 121 pitches in this game. For context, there have been 147 pitchers to throw at least that many pitches on their own in a playoff game. The last was Justin Verlander, who threw 123 pitches in a complete game effort to lead the Astros over the Yankees in the 2017 ALCS.

But Cora managed his bullpen flawlessly, using Ryan Brasier for Stanton in the sixth, Tanner Houck for a perfect inning in the seventh, Hansel Robles for another perfect inning in the eighth and rookie Rule 5 pick Garrett Whitlock, who began his career with the Yankees, to close the game out in the ninth.

In normal times, the Red Sox’ bullpen doesn’t stack up. It’s a puzzle on a nightly basis. There are no clear roles and there’s no closer.

In the playoffs, Cora gets the best out of the arms he has.

And low and behold, the Red Sox made some plays with their gloves on Tuesday.

The relay throw was the play of the game, and they managed to go nine innings without a single defensive mistake.

“We played defense,” Cora said. “When we play defense, we’re good.”

Even without J.D. Martinez, who is a question mark for the Rays series with a sprained left ankle, the Red Sox offense out-classed the Yankees’ bullpen and added three runs late on two of their best arms, Luis Severino and Jonathan Loaisiga.

If the Red Sox in the first half looked like a mediocre team that was good at winning, and in the second half they looked like a mediocre team that wasn’t, Tuesday’s game was something altogether different.

They pitched. They hit. The played defense. The manager pulled the right strings and the atmosphere at Fenway Park was electric.
The Red Sox looked like a complete baseball team.

“It can get you on a roll,” Bogaerts said. “If we played badly, we would have been going home, but we played good in a very pressured situation, a situation that was very important. We couldn’t make mistakes. Now we go to Tampa and feel like we could play pretty free.”

They’ll be the underdogs, but if they play like they did on Tuesday night, the defending A.L. champion Rays will have their hands full.

“We’ve just got to be ready to face a great baseball team,” Cora said. “Probably coming into the season, everybody talked about them being the best team in the big leagues. And we have a huge challenge. But we’re ready for it.”