When Alex Cora got his current job he made it clear that wins were going to be appreciated. In the world of Major League Baseball it is not easy consistently scoring more runs than your opponent so when you do there should be at least a brief period of celebration, no matter what path the team took to get there.
Monday night it was an approach that was put to the test.
The smiles from the Red Sox weren't difficult to find after their 6-5 walk-off win over the White Sox, with the euphoria of Marco Hernandez's game-winning infield hit starting at home plate and continuing into the clubhouse. (For a complete recap, click here.)
"I think it’s a great feeling going around," said Red Sox outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. "Walk-offs just feel different. Everybody’s excited and the team morale is hopefully boosted."
"There was a lot of stuff that didn’t go right but in the end, you know what we won and that’s the most important thing," Cora noted.
First of all, they won a game which was started by one of the best pitchers in the American League this season, Lucas Giolito, driving the righty from the game with two outs in the sixth after he walked home a run with to tie the game at 3-3. Final line? That would be 5 2/3 innings, three runs, six hits, four walks and seven strikeouts.
Or how about the swing put on by Mookie Betts on the first pitch he saw in the seventh inning? The 106 mph, 410-foot home run to center field offered a glimpse of what might be if Betts starts being Betts. (As much as he has struggled, it should be noted that the righty hitter has a 1.131 OPS from the seventh inning and on.)
And for all the talk of the bullpen not supplying enough answers, Josh Taylor represented a bolt of optimism, coming in for Colten Brewer with a full count and two outs in the eighth inning. The lefty's only pitch to John Jay did result in a walk, but the subsequent at-bat would result in an inning-ending strikeout of Yoan Moncada. Taylor would go on to pitch a full inning before turning things over to Brandon Workman for the final out of the White Sox' ninth.
"I’ve been talking about it for a month and a half, really," said Cora of the move to Taylor in the middle of the at-bat, which was made only after James McCann stole second. "I don’t want Jon Jay to put the ball in play against a right-hander. I know he can go out of the zone and flip it to left field so if McCann hit a double it was going to be Taylor and Jay so you know what, it’s lefty against Jay and we’ll take our chances. Taylor is throwing the ball great. It’s a matchup that’s actually better for us and we went with it. He made a good pitch and Jon took the pitch and we walk. JT was amazing. He’s been throwing the ball well, so it was a tough one trying to tell Brew hang here with your crazy manager and I said just ‘Relax brother. Just kill pitch and if you strike him out, you walk him, you walk him. You’ve got the next match up which is good for you,’ so it worked out."
There was also the impact of Andrew Benintendi, whose leadoff double in the ninth inning offered the kind of spark from the Sox' No. 2 hitter the Sox had been relying on coming into this season. In his last 11 games Benintendi is now hitting .346 with a .901 OPS. It has been a step in the right direction.
But up until the Red Sox closed things out -- having scored one run in each of their last five innings -- the list of concerns were already being put in place. They had bad baserunning. Missed hit-and-runs. Eduardo Rodriguez (6 1/3 innings, 5 runs) kept giving up runs after the Red Sox would claw back.
This team has won nine of its last 12 games. It sits one game out of a Wild Card berth. And there seem to be some reinforcements on the horizon. But there is still that sting of inconsistency left behind by those two losses to Toronto. There is the .500 record at home. There were the aforementioned uncomfortable moments in this one.
A win is a win. The slogan for the 2019 Red Sox.