With All Due Respect, The Boston Red Sox Don’t Scare Me

I started a trend last offseason with my “Why I am Not Afraid of the (fill in the blank team name)” posts and that is a trend that I will continue this postseason as well. I beat a dead horse telling you why the Oakland Athletics did not scare me as long as the Wild Card Game was played in the Bronx and now I am back to tell you why, with all due respect of course to a team that won 108 games this season, the Boston Red Sox don’t scare me either.

The Boston Red Sox are a great team, don’t get me wrong, but so are the New York Yankees. Both teams are young, hungry and aggressive, but there are a few distinct differences that should, and ultimately will in my opinion, decide the winner of this short, five-game series. Pitching, pitching, and pitching.

The Boston Red Sox have a terrible bullpen. Let’s call a spade a spade. Even Jared Carrabis, the biggest douche bag homer that covers the Red Sox would say so. The Yankees, nine times out of ten anyway, do not. In fact, the Yankees bullpen is a strength that can put up six-or-seven innings worth of zeroes on any given night when they are on. The Yankees offense can, and has for that matter, feast off that bullpen if given the chance. That’s not to say that Boston and their prolific offense couldn’t do the same against the Yankees, because they can, and they have, but (homer alert? Maybe?) I personally trust the Yankees bullpen a lot more than I would trust Boston’s, whether I was a Yankees fan or not.

But what about the starters? On paper and without looking at the stats I would imagine that Baseball Reference would tell you that Boston has a better starting staff. Good for them, and good for the paper (digital or otherwise) that it’s written on. 162 games for nothing. I said it before the postseason began and I will say it again. Throw those stats out the window, this is October. Chris Sale has not faired well in the postseason, albeit in two ALDS appearances that both resulted in a loss, and David Price has probably been playing Fortnite all night long hoping that his carpal tunnel would return so that he wouldn’t have to pitch against the Yankees on Saturday night. It goes beyond the stats at this point, it has to be mental by now. Especially for Price. The bright lights begin to shine, you try to do a little too much, you make one mistake and boom, the game is blown open. Rick Porcello inside Yankee Stadium doesn’t worry me and having JA Happ pitching twice in this series gives me all the confidence that I need. Happ may not walk away with two victories, but I guarantee he will give the Yankees two opportunities to win before it is all said and done. Masahiro Tanaka should keep the Yankees in the game and give them a shot to win and so should the savvy veteran, CC Sabathia, at home in the Bronx. Oh, and not to mention that the Yankees still have their ace in reserves for Game Four in the Bronx regardless of what happens in Boston.

Both teams have great offenses and both teams can pitch well, you don’t win 100+ games in a season if you don’t, but I truly, truly think that the Red Sox are going to play with everything to lose, while the Yankees will play with everything to gain. When you play loose, you tend to win. When you play timidly or cautious, you make mistakes. It’s a fact. Especially in October. The Yankees got their jitters out of the way on Wednesday night as Luke Voit, Giancarlo Stanton, and others got their first playoff games out of the way. Now they can go back to business as usual and continue on to their path of the franchise’s 28^th World Series Championship.

With all due respect to Boston, your Red Sox don’t scare me much. Yankees in five is my prediction, and I only say five games because the Red Sox clinched the division on Yankee Stadium turf, so I would love to end their season inside Fenway Park.

Yankees in five. Go Yankees!!