The Boston Red Sox entered this week’s series against the Tampa Bay Rays at the Trop knowing that it was pretty much now or never if they hoped to make a real run at an AL Wild Card spot this year. Unfortunately, Tyler Glasnow wasn’t in much of an obliging mood.
Glasnow was absolutely unreal on in Wednesday’s series finale, firing six innings of one-run ball while allowing just three hits and racking up a whopping 14 strikeouts. Glasnow has always been among the most tantalizing starters in the game — he’s had trouble staying on the field for extended periods of time, but when he’s on, you wonder how anyone has ever gotten a hit off him. He was on tonight:
High-90s heat commanded to all quadrants of the zone, plus a slider that functions more like a cutter in the low 90s and a snap-dragon curve? Good luck.
There was undoubtedly more at stake here for Boston than for Tampa. Wednesday’s game marked the end of a brutal 16-game stretch in which the Red Sox faced Houston twice, the Dodgers and the Rays — four of the top five or six World Series favorites. This most recent loss dropped them to 6-10 over that span, 4.5 games back of the Rangers for the final AL Wild Card spot. And the road will hardly get easier from here: Boston welcomes the AL-leading Orioles to Fenway Park this weekend, then a suddenly-streaking Yankees team before closing the regular season with series against the Blue Jays, Rangers, White Sox (oh good, a brief respite), Rays and O’s again. At this rate, the Sox will likely need to get close to 90 wins to snag a playoff spot, which would require playing something like .680 baseball down the stretch — a very tall order, considering that schedule.
But this was also a big moment for a Rays team that’s flying under the radar a bit — or at least as much as a team with the second-best record in the AL can fly under the radar. It feels like most people wrote off Tampa’s World Series chances amid a miserable August that saw Shane McClanahan (injury) and Wander Franco (very disturbing off-field allegations) be likely lost for the remainder of the season. Glasnow and Zach Eflin are the last men standing in a once-stacked rotation, and while that’s not a ton of margin for error, Wednesday night served as a reminder of just how incredible Glasnow can be at the height of his powers. No one manufactures run prevention like Kevin Cash and Co., and if Randy Arozarena and Yandy Diaz can get going again before October, look out. Tampa is now just 3.5 games back of the O’s in the division race, with a huge weekend series with the Mariners upcoming.
